Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The gathering storm overhead seemed fitting for the day, and for once Ray found he had no worries for the rain it carried. Like most of the kids, he’d been dragged out of the school for the day, forced to dress in his nicest clothes, and line the streets as the funeral procession made its way towards them. Cameras lined the streets too, along with a good number of Capitolite citizens, kept far from the young children who made up the picturesque Distict 4 mourners. They’d done this the past two years now, now kept a couple of rows back to let the littlest children take front and centre, but that just meant the umbrellas that the adults carried would block the rain from falling on them. Beside him, Shad craned forward to look up the street.

“When do you reckon they’re gonna come?” Shad whispered. “They’re taking forever.”

“Dunno, the horses aren’t fast,” Ray replied. “You’d think they’d get faster horses with their money.”

Funerals in District 4 were rarely ever like this. Mostly it was kept in the family, with those closest washing the corpse and keeping it wet before carrying it to the docks to take a boat out to sea, while close friends were allowed to attend the last steps, watching their friend be committed to the sea from the shoreline. Bodies were weighed down with whatever the family could afford to spare. Often the funeral for their neighbours was delayed a while as they scrounged up enough rocks to weigh down the heavy corpse. Sometimes they had to commit a body three or four times before they stayed in the water. The dockyard record was ten.

No, District 4 funerals were not this fancy, but for two occasions. Capitol citizens would sometimes pay to get a District 4 funeral instead of a Capitol one, whatever that entailed, and they’d get the horse and carriage, have their family travel in luxury down to the ocean to watch them scatter the ashes into the water, or for those with more wealth than sense, have the body weighed down in its entirety by whatever the most expensive thing they could bury them in was. Ray sometimes dreamt of those bodies washing up on the shore, their gold and diamond lined pockets still full of treasure, that he found it hours before the peacekeepers did, just long enough to sell the trinkets for enough money to keep him fed for the rest of his life. Ah, what a dream…

The second occasion was now.

Capitol citizens may line the street, but the family that walked with the simple wooden coffins were anything but Capitolite. Their faces told of a harsh sorrow Ray couldn’t even begin to imagine, their hands holding onto each other, and onto the wood of the casket, too. The families of tributes. The cameras were pointed harshly into their mourning faces, tears no longer able to be held back.

They were in the middle of the procession, the coffins laid on simple carriages, dragged by horses and led by the undertakers, the District’s strangest yet possibly wealthiest self-made couple, dressed all in black, their suits perfectly kept, their funny hats resting on their heads. In front of them walked their children, a little girl their age, and a boy a few years older than them. They went to school the far side of the district, where the in-land aquaculture and ship building families sent their kids, but they saw them every year, their shocking head of copper hair each and golden skin a sight to behold in the cobblestone streets. They, too, seemed to be a reminder of the games. A boy and a girl, leading the procession for a dead boy and a dead girl.

The procession was closed off by more cameras, scanning the crowds as people closed in after the procession, following the coffins down to the docks. By the time the procession fully passed them the crowd would be too thick for them to see anything, but for now they had full view of the undertaker family and the horses, and Ray could see Shad fighting back a grin.

“She’s really pretty, isn’t she?” Shad asked, to which Ray elbowed him in the ribs.

“What, you got a crush on the funeral girl, Shad?” Ray teased. “Bet she smells of dead bodies.”

“Bet she doesn’t,” Shad insisted. “And no, I don’t have a crush, she’s just pretty!”

“Pretty gross,” Ray teased, and Shad turned to argue more, but their teacher was shooting them a harsh look, and they both turned back to watching the procession pass. Once the crowd closed in on them, though, and the horses were out of sight, their teacher started to usher them and the rest of their class away from the streets, starting the slow walk back to school for afternoon lessons.

“I wonder what horses eat,” Shad asked as they walked together, trying to keep to the back of the class and out of the teacher’s earshot. “Do you think they eat fish too?”

“I bet they eat grain, like the tesserae,” Ray answered. “But maybe they like fish. Maybe we should ask Dad.”

“Bet Dad doesn’t know either,” Shad shrugged. “He doesn’t know anything outside of fishing.”

Ray climbed up onto one of the walls keeping the streets from the beach and walked along it, while Shad remained on the street instead. “I wonder if anyone we know will get reaped when we’re the right age,” Ray pondered. It was ages away anyway, they wouldn’t be in the reaping for another five years, after all. That was more than half of their life so far!

“Mum always seems to know the kids who are getting reaped each year, so maybe,” Shad shrugged. “Maybe then we’ll get interviewed.”

“That’d be fun,” Ray agreed, glancing up as he saw the teacher approaching. “Uh oh.”

“Odair! Get down from there!” Mrs Morgan shouted as Ray scrambled off of the wall. “I will tell your father about this!”

“Oh yeah?” Ray asked, as Shad stepped back and Ray skirted around the other side of her.

“What name will you give him?” Shad asked, matching his tempo to pick up exactly as Ray stopped talking, exactly as they passed each other.

“Is it Shad?” Ray asked.

“Or will it be Ray?” Shad asked. Mrs Morgan huffed loudly.

“I will tell him that you have both been causing trouble for me.”

“But I didn’t even climb on the wall!” Ray insisted. “I didn’t do nothing!”

“He’s lying!” Shad insisted. “I’m the innocent one!”

“You can’t punish us both,” Ray insisted.

“It’s just not right!” Shad finished. Mrs Morgan seemed ready to blow a forehead vein at them, instead shoving them forward to walk in front of her instead of skipping and skirting behind her, where she couldn’t keep track of who was who. Not that she could ever tell one from the other, nor could anyone. It was a fun game to play, after all. One only they could play, and only together. Just last year they’d spent two weeks both insisting blind that they were Shad, and everyone was forced to go along with it simply because they had nothing else to go by. Even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart without a little bit of prompting!

The trip back to the school was relatively quiet after that, with Ray and Shad keeping together as always, chatting and joking on while their classmates hung out with their friends instead. No-one else in the class had a brother in the same year as them, so no-one else got to have the same fun they did. Once they were back at school, the rest of the day was dedicated to learning about the Hunger Games, and the like, but Ray and Shad rarely really listened to those lessons. It would be years before they ever were in the reaping, and District 4 always had so many volunteers, the risk of them going to the Games wasn’t high at all. It would be fine.

Once the bell rang for the end of the school day, Ray and Shad walked home themselves: Mum had said they could, on their last day of school for the summer. They were very nearly eight, anyway, old enough to walk the half hour walk back to their house from school, and old enough to walk their next door neighbour too, five year old Angel, who clung to their hands and tried to get them to skip with her all the way home, although Ray and Shad refused to, instead letting her swing their arms to and fro as she went, singing a song she made up about them.

With Angel home safely, they retreated to their house, where their parents still hadn’t returned. It wasn’t unusual. The boats would have only returned this morning, and their mother would no doubt be trying to sell off the fish she had speared that morning to the towns people for a couple extra coin: her fishing trident was still stashed behind the door, so she wasn’t out fishing. Ray grabbed it and took it to the dining room table, where Shad joined him.

“Do you reckon Mum will let us go fishing by ourselves this summer?” Shad asked as Ray polished the prongs with an old rag, watching the metal shine with pride. They didn’t have a lot of shiny things in their house, just the fishing hooks and the trident, so Ray and Shad both took pride in making sure they stayed as shiny as they could.

“Maybe. We’re old enough now, and we can catch them without her help,” Ray agreed. They’d been begging her to let them go fishing without her for the last year, but she’d never let them, but even she said she started going fishing by herself when she was eight, so she had no excuse. “I like it when Dad cooks the fish we catch, it feels really special.”

“Next year he’s gonna take us on the boat,” Shad reminded him, bouncing with excitement in his seat. “I can’t wait. Johnny said it’s great sleeping at sea.”

“Do you reckon he’ll take both of us or one at a time?” Ray asked, which made Shad pause. “All the other families just take one kid and train them, Koi said its a lot of work to train up kids so they try to keep the new ones to one per ship.”

“Huh,” Shad said, looking concerned. They’d never really been apart before: there wasn’t enough room in their house to really avoid each other, they were always in the same classes, and as best friends they never did anything without the other. The thought of being apart for days at a time while one was at sea and one was at home was… unnerving. “Well, maybe they’ll let us both on. Or we can just sneak on and pretend to be one person again, they’ll never know.”

“Yeah!” Ray agreed. Nothing to worry about, nothing at all. They wouldn’t get separated that easily.

With the trident cleaned they set about their daily chores, tidying up their little corner of their parent’s bedroom, making their shared bed, and sweeping out the water that had built up on the floor. With everything tidy, they set about playing with their toys instead as they waited for their parents to return home. It was another couple of hours before the front door opened, though.

In walked their Dad, his brown hair windswept and his steel grey eyes weary, but at the sound of his sons rushing toward him he smiled, pulling them both into a tight hug. Wobbe Odair worked long, hard days on the fishing boats, bringing home what money he could earn to feed them all, but over the past year he’d been bringing home more money, more food. Even the occaisional toy. He told them that with his friend Nangra and his son Danio buying their own boat and sharing the profits more fairly, he was earning more than before, and they could afford to be just that little bit more comfortable. He’d also told them he was putting money aside for something, something big, but refused to say what for. Shad reckoned it was for their own house, without having to pay rent. Ray reckoned it was for his own boat. Dad had refused to elaborate either way.

“How was the fishing, Dad?” Ray asked as he leant back from the hug, Dad picking them both up and carrying them to the dining table to sit them on it. “Did you catch anything good?”

“Lots and lots and lots,” Dad assured them, ruffling his hand through their hair, to which Shad tried to shove him off, but Ray leant into it. Ray knew his Dad used it as a way to tell them apart, that Shad hated his hair being touched while Ray loved it, but he wasn’t about to make his Dad stop just so he could continue to confuse his parents, and Shad refused to pretend he liked it, too. “Is your mother home yet?”

“Nope,” Ray shrugged.

The front door opened again, with their mother walking in now, her fish basket empty, a smile across her face. “Don’t go telling lies, boys, I’m right here,” she teased as Shad and Ray ran up to her too, throwing themselves at her for a hug, which she dropped her basket to the floor to embrace them properly. Ah, her hugs were always so warm... Mom might not have a full time job like Dad, since she had to care for them, but she was a fantastic fisherwoman all the same, spear fishing illegally on the beaches and taking her catches into town to sell under the pretense of selling her husband’s catch. It was fantastic for saving a few extra coin: you didn’t pay Capitol taxes on poached fish, after all. After a moment or two, she let go of Ray, scooping Shad in her arms, while Dad came back to pick up Ray, carrying them both to the dining table once more. “How was the funeral?”

“Shad likes the funeral girl!” Ray exclaimed, to which Shad instantly went red with embarrassment, pouting with all his might.

“Do not! I just said she’s pretty!”

“I bet she’s got dead people cooties,” Ray teased, to which Shad shoved him, Dad throwing his hand between them to stop them fighting before it got any further.

“But it was alright? You two didn’t get too upset?” Mom asked, to which they both shook their heads. “That’s fine. It’ll be the last time you two have to do that, they seem to think you kids look too old when you’re eight to be cute mourners.”

“What’s for tea?” Shad asked instead, to which Mom walked over to the stove, lifting the lid off a pot and showing them an uncooked stew she had prepared earlier in the day. Gosh, Mom’s stews were always so delicious, this was great! She put the pot back on the stove, lighting it up as they watched, before returning to the table.

“It’ll be a short while, but that’s fine,” Mom said, pulling out a chair from the table, indicating for them to take a seat too, as did Dad. “We’ve got something serious to talk to you two about.”

They climb off the table and sit in the seats instead, watching as their parents share a glance at each other, before Dad speaks first. “You two have heard of the Academy, right? We’ve spoken about it before.”

They sure had, and the kids at school talked about it sometimes, too. It was a school like theirs, but you had to pay to attend it, and it was really far in land. They said they trained kids to fight there, too, to give them a better chance if they were reaped for the Hunger Games, but you weren’t really meant to say it out loud. The Peacekeepers turned a blind eye to it, but you weren’t meant to say it in case they took offence.

“They take students from the age of eight,” Mom added, “which means you two, come the end of Summer. It’s a really great school, you learn lots, it gives you a good chance to get a better job when you’re an adult. That means you’ll earn more money than us, be more comfortable than us.”

“You’re gonna send us to a different school?” Shad asked, a little shake in his voice. But all their friends were at their current school, only the snooty rich kids from town talked about going to the Academy, and Ray didn’t want to leave his friends behind. Mom bit her lip, and Dad shook his head.

“We can’t afford to send you both,” he stated. “Not that you understand money much, but, uh, we have to pay them so much every month, and then they charge you more money once you graduate, because we couldn’t pay it all. And we can only cover one lot of the monthly charge.”

“You want to send us to separate schools?” Ray asked, reaching for Shad’s hand under the table, feeling Shad grab his, squeezing it tight. “I don’t want to go to a different school to Shad!”

“And I don’t want to go to a different school to Ray!” Shad insisted.

“It’s not that bad,” Mom insisted. “It means one of you will be able to have a much better life when you grow up, and you’ll be better protected if you ever get sent to the Hunger Games. You’re… you’re less likely to die. You don’t want to be walking alongside the coffin like you watched today, do you?”

Ray felt his lip quiver, wrapping his arm around Shad’s instead of just holding his hand. No, he didn’t want to know what it felt like, to be one of those families screaming with grief, dragging themselves behind the coffin. He didn’t want Shad to die, to never see him again, never play with him again, never confuse people by swapping places with each other when they turned their back on them again…

“And if you’re really good and score well at the school, you could even make sure the other doesn’t die if they’re reaped, by taking their place,” Dad added, and Ray could hear Shad’s breathing catch in his throat. They had to go to different schools or one of them would die? That was awful, he didn’t want Shad to die, he didn’t want to lose him.

“So, who wants to go to the Academy?” Mom asked, and in tandem, they answered:

“I want to keep going to our school,” Shad and Ray said in unison, and their parents cringed.

“Okay,” Dad agreed quietly, reaching for his pocket. “We’ll flip a coin, heads and Ray goes to the Academy, tails and Shad goes to the Academy. And don’t go trying to swap places with each other, one going one day, one going the next. You’ll only get in trouble, get you both kicked out, lose us all that money, you don’t want the money to go to waste, do you?” Dad asked, and they both shook their heads. Dad flipped the coin, and slammed it on the table, his hand covering the result. So this was it. Their whole future lay beneath his hand, and Ray felt his breath catch in his throat.

Slowly, Dad’s hand uncovered the coin, gleaming in the dying sunlight streaming through the window.

As a small face winked back at them.

Chapter Text

Summer had gone too fast, and with it, Ray felt an impending sense of doom. They’d already told all their friends that Ray wasn’t going to be going to school with them next year, he was going to the Academy instead, he was going to the expensive school with all the rich kids. And completely without his brother, too.

That had made everyone the most confused. No-one saw one without the other. They were hardly even seen as two seperate kids: it was always Shad and Ray. Ray and Shad. Sometimes their friends joked that they were just one person named Shadandray who you invited to parties and out to play. Separating them felt like trying to split and share a fishing rod by cutting the line mid-way through it: it’d never work that way.

But their parents insisted, and Ray’s fate was sealed, as his Mom got him dressed and smartly groomed in his new uniform. Shad didn’t have a uniform, Shad wore the same clothes he always wore to school, while Ray had some uncomfortable, ugly clothes he had to wear every day for the next ten years, whether he liked it or not. And he hated it. But no matter how many times he told his parents as much, they refused to hear him, refused to let him just drop this whole Academy thing and go back to their normal school. This was happening. It was as inevitable as the tide.

“There!” Mom declared, stepping back as she finished fussing with Ray’s hair. The clothes felt weird on him, even weirder under Shad’s stare, a laugh buried beneath his hand. “As handsome as all the town kids.”

“They’ll know I’m not a town kid the moment they smell me,” Ray insisted. Despite bathing last night, the sea air brought all manner of smells into their homes, which the town kids turned their noses up at, and the inland kids seemed even more insulted by, on the rare occasion they passed them by. And he looked so stupid in this get up; who even wore a tie, never mind someone his age!

“Don’t be silly, why will they be smelling you?” Mom asked, glancing at the clock. “Well, you’d best be on your way, Nels said he’d walk you to school but you’re gonna have to leave now to catch the next tram.”

“Shad doesn’t even need to leave for another two hours!” Ray insisted. “Why do I have to get up so early?”

“I’ll be getting up that early too,” Shad reminded him. “You’ll make sure of that.”

“The Academy starts earlier than Shad’s school,” Mom insisted, “And it’s much further away. But you’ll get to catch the tram every day, won’t that be fun?”

Ray fixed her with the coldest glare he had in his arsenal. Wasn’t it bad enough he had to go away from all his friends, to not be with his brother, to go to this stupid school in this stupid uniform, did they have to rub salt in the wound by making it start so early too?

“I’ll walk with you to the tram,” Shad offered. “It’s nearly on the way to school, I’ll just get there early.”

“Too early, and it’s not on the way,” Mom insisted. “You’ll stay here.”

Shad pouted, jumping off of the chair and rushing over to give Ray a hug, which Ray returned. “It’ll be okay, Ray,” Shad assured him. “We’ll still play after school and you can tell me all the funny stuff the rich kids say and do and we’ll laugh together, okay?”

“Okay,” Ray agreed, but he still didn’t want to go. He didn’t really want Shad to go, either, he’d really rather prefer that his parents just dropped the subject entirely, but trying to convince them all summer hadn’t worked, he doubted they’d suddenly change their mind now, especially since Dad was currently working. A knock on the door grabbed all of their attentions.

“Right!” Mom declared, shooing Shad away from Ray as she grabbed Ray’s shoulder and led him to the front door. “Have a wonderful day, Ray, and tell us all about it when you get home.”

Mom opened the door, where Nels was waiting just outside of it. Nels was sixteen and technically no longer in school, working the boats full time, but he’d gone to the Academy for a couple of years before being forced to drop out. Dad said his parents had sent him to the Academy less for training and more because the local school struggled with signing all the lessons to him, while the Academy were at least willing to put the effort it. Nels waved a hello to Mrs Odair, before placing a hand on Ray’s shoulder and leading him onwards.

“Why don’t you go to school?” Ray asked Nels, his unpracticed hands signing each word slowly. They were taught a little bit of sign language for on the boats, for when the storms raged too loudly and you couldn’t hear each other for the noise. Nels’ grandad had been good friends with Mom growing up, so she’d made sure they learnt a little bit more. Just enough to chat with Nels when they passed him on the streets.

“I had to work,” Nels replied with a shrug. “Family comes first.”

How he wished his parents felt the same way, but clearly separating him and Shad was a lot less important than sending him to this stupid school. He didn’t even understand why he was going there in the first place, what was so special about the stupid school, other than the stupid uniform and the cost? When he tried asking Nels, though, Nels used signs Ray didn’t understand, until eventually he just settled on “Because they love you.”

On the tram, Nels handed over a small amount of money for a ticket, while Ray showed him the card his Mom had given him proving he was going to the Academy, and the tram driver accepted that instead. Nels sat beside Ray, telling him how nice the school was, how good the lunch was, anything he thought might cheer Ray up, but nothing worked. Ray just felt miserable, and eventually Nels just wrapped an arm around his shoulders, giving him a tight squeeze.

Eventually the tram pulled to a stop, with Nels motioning Ray to get up and follow him, leading Ray through streets he’d never seen before in his life. They never ventured far from home, to be honest. To school, to the beach, to the docks, furthest they’d ever gone was to town with Mom or fishing by the rock pools, but this felt like another district entirely. Gone was the salt-tinged sea breeze, thick with the stench of fish guts and cat wee, instead replaced with the distant smell of freshly sawn wood and starch, as Nels pointed out the ship building yards, before guiding Ray further along cobblestone streets.

The further they got, the more uniforms Ray spotted like his, with one or two other kids staring at him as he passed. Somewhere along the way, someone jumped on Nels, stopping both of them as Nels started signing rapidly at them, a big bright smile across his face. Ray couldn’t keep up with the conversation at all, instead shuffling his feet against the floor.

“Go on,” a voice called out, Ray looking up. The person, a boy probably about Nels’ age, was smiling at him, waving at him to speak. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Uh, Ray,” Ray answered. “Ray Odair.”

“Ray? That’s pretty normal for kids from your neck of the woods, isn’t it? Don’t they name you all after fish or something?”

“We do, in my family,” Ray insisted. “I’m named after a manta ray, they’re really big. My brother Shad’s named after the hickory shad. But not everyone is.”

“Are you starting this year?” The boy asked, continuing as Ray stared at him, “At the Academy, you’re eight, right?”

“Yeah?” Ray confirmed, a little confused.

“My cousin will be the same age as you. Jonah! Come here! Found a little friend for you.”

Jonah, as it turned out, looked just as frightened as Ray felt, and that felt a little comforting at least. He inched closer, not seeming sure what to make of Ray. “Jonah, this here is Ray, named for the big old manta ray fish. Now you’ve got a friend and I don’t need to chase you around. See ya!”

With that, the boy grabbed Nels and dragged him away, leaving Ray alone with Jonah, with Ray suddenly feeling panicky. “I don’t know where I’m going! No, Nels, don’t go!”

But Nels couldn’t hear him, and with his friend dragging him away, Ray’s desperate signs went unseen too, leaving Ray alone in the street. A little tug on Ray’s sleeve grabbed his attention.

“I know the way,” Jonah offered. “Mommy walked me to the school yesterday, I can show you.”

“Please,” Ray begged. “I don’t know where anything is here.”

Jonah nodded, taking the lead down the street as Ray followed, feeling even more out of place than before. “Did your parents not go to the Academy?” Jonah asked, and Ray shook his head.

“No-one goes here, and I don’t want to go either,” Ray insisted. “I wanna go home and play with my brother.”

“Oh, why couldn’t he come?” Jonah asked.

“Dad said it costs too much money, he flipped a coin for who had to go to the Academy,” Ray explained. After a bit of walking, Ray asked, “Do you have a brother?”

“No, just a cousin,” Jonah said. “He doesn’t like me very much.”

“Oh, that’s sad,” Ray said quietly. “Shad loves me a lot ‘cos I love him a lot too. I don’t want to go to a school where he’s not.”

“I’ve got a sister,” Jonah offered. “But she’s too young to come here so she stays at home. That’s the Academy.”

Jonah pointed up the street to a large, stone building, decorated in flowers and surrounded by fields. Ray stared at it for a short while, but it didn’t look much like a school. School was worn down and falling apart and had kids climbing over the fences while teachers yelled at them. This place just looked weird.

“They look to be about our age,” Jonah piped up, pointing to where there were more two more kids stood just inside the gate, looking equally as befuddled as Ray felt. “Let’s say hi.”

Despite that, neither Ray nor Jonah moved, standing frozen with fear just outside the school gates, until the kids inside turned to see them, and Ray actually recognised one of them.

“Oh! Hi Keeli!” Ray waved at her, to which Keeli’s face flushed with relief, waving him over as Ray rushed to join her, Jonah following behind. “Where did you go? Me and Shad missed seeing you at school!”

They used to play with Keeli quite a bit back when they were six, before Keeli’s parents were killed in a freak accident at the docks while they were all at school. Dad said the Peacekeepers had taken Keeli to an ‘orphanage’, where they raised kids without parents, but wouldn’t say where that was. Well, the orphanage must be rich to send her here!

“Hi Ray!” Keeli greeted, wrapping her arms around him as a greeting like she always did, before stepping back. “I live near here now! They said I get to go to this school because I’m special, why are you here? Where’s Shad?”

“Dad says Shad can’t come because it’s too expensive,” Ray explained with a pout. “I wanted to just keep going to our old school but Dad says I can’t do that either.”

“So, you’re from the slums too?” The girl with Keeli asked. “With your fish names, you gotta be a fisherman’s son, right?”

“Yeah?” Ray shrugged. “We’re not all named after fish, you know. There’s adventurers, or parts of boats, or stories, or stuff too. Why? What are you named for?”

“Zabra, my Dad’s a boat builder so he named me after a type of boat,” Zabra explained. “I thought you were all named after fish?”

“Keeli’s not,” Ray pointed out.

“Keeli’s moved up in the world.”

Before Ray could answer, a bell rang out in the courtyard, grabbing all of their attentions, while some adults, presumably the teachers, walked around demanding they line up by age. Keeli’s hand slipped into Ray’s as she dragged him with her, Jonah following behind, holding Ray’s sleeve.

They lined up together, one of the teachers going down the line with a clipboard, taking everyone’s name and ticking off some list or another. For a brief, hopeful second, Ray thought they might send him away, see he wasn’t meant to be here and send him home once more, but that didn’t happen. They just ticked his name too and moved on.

“Gosh, look how tiny they are!” A loud voice from somewhere behind Ray exclaimed. “We were never that small, were we?”

“The new kids always seem smaller and smaller every year,” another one added with a laugh.

“Can’t imagine any of them going to the Games, look at them! They’d get chewed up and spit out in under a minute!”

Ray tried to find the voices, but all he could see when he turned around was a wall of teenagers jeering at him, in the same clothes as him, eyeing him up as one might eye up a guppy mixed among the herring: pick it up and throw it out. He turned back around and squeezed Keeli’s hand instead.

From there the teachers guided them into the school, showing them their new classroom, which was a lot cleaner and neater than any classroom had the right to be, the paint wasn’t even flaking off of the walls, before they were sat down and made to introduce themselves to everyone else. Most of the kids were from the town or inland, with only Ray and Keeli introducing themselves as having come from a true fishing background. Jonah’s mom was the town jeweller, who’s pearl necklaces his Mom occaisionally cooed over in the shop window. Zabra was very proud of her ship-builder father, and told everyone about it at length. In contrast, Ray got very few questions from his classmates about his family’s trade.

After introductions they were lined up again, walked to a large hall, and made to sit down in the seats within, cold, and uncomfortable. All the other kids filed in too, but they were sat at the front, so at least they could see, and finally, last of all, a bunch of adults Ray passingly recognised walked in. Victors. What were they doing here?

A tall man, greying, in a smart suit and glasses falling down his face, walked up on the stage and gave an introductory speech, claiming to be the headmaster and welcoming them all to the Academy. Ray was never one for listening to speeches: even when his Dad was off on a rant, telling him and Shad off for ‘causing trouble’ again, he tended to tune it out, and now was no exception. The information was very dull anyway, about expectations for studying at the school, about the high standards they had, blah blah blah… He introduced the Victors, who Ray sort of half-recognised from previous years of Games, the most recent being Careen, who the old man proudly announced was a graduate of the school. He points out Jib, Scud, and Xebec, finished with Zander, who was really old too. There’s only one Victor left on the stage unintroduced, and Ray finds himself zoned out enough to hear whispers from a few rows back.

“I didn’t think Mags would turn up today, I thought she’d quit all of this.”

“Clearly not, so shush!”

Mags? Oh, he sort of recognised that name. Didn’t Dad say once how sorry he felt for her? He couldn’t remember why, though. The headmaster lead a round of applause as Mags stood up, approaching the front of the stage. There was an unmistakably sad look to her eyes as she addressed them all.

“Thank you for that lovely introduction, Headmaster Stern,” she announced, a smile making its way onto her face, but it didn’t reach all the right places for it to be genuine. “It’s an honour to see you all here today, whether you are returning for another school year, or just starting at the school,” Mags gave them all a smile in the front row, which Ray returned. He didn’t like her looking sad, after all.

“When first I put funding towards opening this school, it was with the goal in mind of helping the children of District 4 find better fortune in their lives, be that their professional lives, or in trying to survive some of the harsher trials of this world. Trials like the Hunger Games. Trials I know personally all too well.”

Mags took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “When first I funded training for children in preparation for the Games, it was to put all our district’s children on a roughly even playing field. I had realised that the children of the fishermen were more likely to go hungry at home, yet more likely to succeed in the Games and see themselves to the finals, than the children of the town and ship building yards. The goal was to have the parents who clearly passed on skills of survival to their children down by the docks earn extra money teaching the children of the wealthy the skills they would otherwise not receive. Over time, this training evolved into the Academy you see before you, and the similar Academies in Districts 1 and 2. For better or for worse, this school is my legacy now, and I hope you will all seek to uphold it and its ideals.”

Mags turned to stare at the older children now, the very, very oldest, right at the back of the hall. “The Games are difficult, and anyone who goes should expect to die, but I hope with all my heart, those among you who know your strength, who know you are more likely to win, might consider volunteering at the end of the year. That we might keep those who are not ready, those who could never win, out of those Games. It is my dream to never see another twelve year old in the Hunger Games, but I know that is but a fantasy.”

“Over the next year, you will face many challenges and trials, and I hope you can face them with skill and confidence, and know that the Academy, and we the Victors, will be behind you and support you all the way. Thank you, and have a wonderful school year.”

Mags returned to her seat as a round of applause picked up, Ray joining in for lack of anything else to do. He didn’t really understand everything she was talking about, but she seemed… nice, for a lack of a better word. Sad, but nice.

The rest of the day was dedicated to teaching, to introducing them to all the different facilities the school had, some of which Ray had never even seen before. They had a pool to teach swimming in, even, as if the beach wasn’t just as good and even closer to his house! The books in the school library weren’t anywhere near as half rotten as the ones at his old school, and all the rooms looked nice and well maintained: he couldn’t see any kick or punch marks in any of the walls, nor did he see any of the kids trying to climb over the fences at break time to escape from the school. He stuck with Keeli, Jonah and Zabra, more out of familiarity than anything else, and Zabra taught him some new playground games they didn’t play back home. Lunch was something else, tasty, delicious and filling, and Ray found that, in all honesty, the school wasn’t that bad, not compared to what he was expecting, but he found himself turning to say something to Shad most of the day, and coming away disappointed that his brother wasn’t there with him.

At three the school day finished, although Jonah told Ray that the older kids stayed until five, and Ray made his way back to the tram stop, carrying on back towards home, finally walking through the front door at half four, tired and worn out from the long journey, and very quickly set upon by Shad.

“Ray!” Shad yelled in greeting, throwing himself at his brother with a hug. Mom hung back, smiling at Ray in a greeting. “I missed you all day! Did you have fun? What was it like?”

“I missed you too,” Ray confirmed, hugging Shad back, and rubbing at his tired eyes. “It’s not as much fun going to school without you there.”

“Same,” Shad said with a pout, while Mom came over and hugged Ray in greeting too.

“Have you been making friends at least?” Mom asked. Ray nodded.

“Keeli’s going to that school, and I like Jonah too. Zabra’s a bit mean but she sticks with us ‘cos no-one else will speak to her,” Ray explained, and Shad’s eyes lit up at Keeli’s name.

“Keeli! Where did she go? Is she going to come play with us again?”

“Hopefully!” Ray agreed. “She’s just as much fun as she was when we were six. What about you, Shad? What’s everyone at school doing?”

“Asking about you,” Shad admitted. “Candiru and Stone think its really sad that you don’t come to school with us any more, and Bobbit is mean about it, he asked if Mom and Dad love you more than me because they’re paying for your schooling and not mine.”

Mom opened her mouth to protest, but Ray beat her to it. “If they loved me more they’d keep sending me to your school instead like we want. Tell Bobbit to go jump off a pier, Shad.”

“I will!” Shad said cheerfully.

Chapter Text

The school year went by without any major issues. The lessons at the new school were mostly the same as at the old, english, maths, science… the equipment and books were all a lot newer though, and there was a lot less kids who would throw and smash the equipment or write in the books during lessons, too. But there were some different classes.

Instead of PE, they had what the teachers called ‘training’. It was mostly the same thing; running, climbing, wrestling… sometimes they went to the school pool, and Ray was surprised to find that some of the kids couldn’t swim. He’d been swimming almost daily since he was born, so he found it easy, but the teachers wanted him to swim in a specific way, a way that they said would be faster, so he still had stuff to learn in the lessons, at least. The water was different though: smoother, but harder to float in than the sea. Nevertheless he quickly excelled in the class compared to his classmates, and he loved the pool lessons.

There was one new thing they learnt in training, though, and that was combat.

Shad said they’d started having similar lessons at his school too, but the description was so different. At Shad’s school, the teachers would let them pick out old wooden weapons and give them a few pointers on how to use them, but there was little instruction beyond that and ‘avoid hitting someone in the face for now’, while Ray’s lessons were a lot more structured. Every combat lesson they were given a new weapon, a sword, a spear, a trident, and shown how to use it properly. Different kids preferred different weapons, and Ray gravitated towards the tridents like Mom used, which was good, because he found it the easiest one to use. Keeli preferred the tridents, too. Zabra liked the bows. Jonah liked a sword and shield but was really good with an axe too. They play fought each other at school, and on a weekend Ray would practice with Shad too, using sticks they found washed up at the beach. But Shad didn’t play right, not like his classmates, and Ray found it kind of annoying to play with him when he was jumping and darting around and waving the stick above his head rather than trying to block him.

“You’re not doing it right!” Ray snapped when Shad started messing around for the third time that day.

“It’s just a game, Ray,” Shad insisted. “It’s not that serious.”

Another lesson they got was what they called ‘interview practice’, but was all about public speaking, really. Sometimes they got up in front of the class and were asked to give a speech about something, maybe something they did that weekend, or their hopes for the future, or something else just as corny. Sometimes it would be a one-on-one thing instead, with the teacher grilling them for answers. They were taught how to compose themselves, how to give the right answer, how to not panic when put on the spot… it was weird, and Shad pointed out when it started to bleed into how Ray spoke at home, how when he was tired after a long day of school he would answer his family’s questions about his day as if he was being interviewed.

Shad didn’t have any of that at school, but he had something else instead: fishing lessons from Dad. Because it turned out, in the hour and a half Ray spent every day going to and returning from school, Shad would spend it pressuring their Dad to teach him more about fishing, and net making, and everything, and Dad in turn would bring Shad along on Nangra’s boat. Ray was taken too, from time to time, never with Shad because the boat was too small to have two kids on together, and never when the boat wouldn’t return in time for Ray to go to school without missing a single day. Dad said it was because they were paying too much to let Ray skip, so Shad got to miss school to learn the family trade, but Ray didn’t, and he wished he could. Dad said he only had a limited time to teach them, too, that once Nangra’s newborn grandson turned eight, he’d go on the boats instead, and they wouldn’t be allowed on anymore.

They had been invited along to watch Danio and his wife Aki introduce their baby to the ocean, which Ray had never seen been done before. Mostly it involved the couple carrying their crying baby down to the water’s edge and dipping them in, calling out the child’s name to the waves that the ocean knew who they were, knew to provide for them, knew to expect them home one day, too. It was really boring, honestly, but Nangra had set aside fish for a barbeque afterwards and Ray remembered that a lot better than the actual ceremony.

Once or twice a Victor would come along to their lessons too, usually a combat or interview lesson. Jonah said his cousin saw them a lot more often, that they visited the older kid’s lessons more frequently, but they never explained why. Mags popped into one of their combat lessons once, while Ray was struggling to use his shield to block Jonah’s sword, when she passed by them, stopping to watch them fight. The look on her face was unreadable, but still that underladen sadness was there, and Ray couldn’t help but ask:

“Mrs Mags?” He asked, waiting for her to look at him before he continued. “Why are you always so sad?”

“Ray!” Jonah hissed, but Ray pressed on.

“Dad says he feels sorry for you, and I’m sorry that you always look so sad. I hope you feel happier soon!”

Mags gave him a smile, a very forced one at that, before moving on, while their teacher came up to them and gave Ray an earful for ‘saying such rude and disrespectful things’ to a respectable Victor like Mags, but he hadn’t meant any disrespect. He just wanted her to be happy again!

The school year went by as any normal school year did, until another unique school festival appeared, although Ray wasn’t allowed to go. ‘Only for students aged 12 and up at the time of the festival’ they had been told. Ray wasn’t sure why they were so specific with the ages, but he supposed it didn’t matter. The party was on an evening anyway, and Ray preferred to spend his evenings playing with Shad, or needling his Dad to teach him things about fishing like he taught his brother.

The Reaping was the next day.

They were too young to be in the Reaping, of course, and Ray was glad for it, but they were still dragged to the square to watch, in the nicest clothes they had. Their neighbour, Johnny, had his name pulled, but someone volunteered in his place, and Johnny returned to his friends, visibly shaking with fright. Ray had never seen Johnny scared before, and as soon as the Reaping concluded, Johnny rushed back to his parents, holding them tight, receiving what assurances he could.

School was very different the next day.

They talked about the Games a lot. A LOT. Every lesson seemed to have been replaced with covering the Games, and Ray found it very bizarre. What had happened to the English lessons? The History lessons? Now they were learning about different types of muttations and watching recaps of the Reaping and interviews at school. None of the Victors visited in that time, for once, and the oldest class of children didn’t have any lessons whatsoever.

When the Games started in earnest, they watched them constantly at school, with screens showing everyone everything that was happening, no matter where they were at school. Except in the toilets. The toilets only had radios describing what they were missing on the screens.

A lot of the other kids seemed somewhat excited about the Games, talking about them excessively, but Ray wasn’t super interested in them. Apparently the two people who volunteered this year had come from the school, which Ray felt was a strange coincidence, but he only commented on it to Jonah, who just shrugged it off. Jonah really didn’t like having to watch the Games, covering over his eyes any time the action started to ramp up. Ray preferred getting to watch them at home than at school, because he could tell Shad all the things they’d been learning at school that day and seem really smart, and he could turn and run to his parents for comfort when he got scared by what he saw on screen. The other kids at school just laughed at Jonah for hiding his eyes non-stop, and Ray fought to not show he was scared of the mutts when he was there.

District 4 didn’t get another Victor that year.

A lot of people were really upset about it, especially at the school, but they didn’t have Victors all that often. More often than other Districts, like District 12, who still didn’t even have a Victor. But still. They weren’t guarranteed to get anyone home. Some people commented on Mags being back as a mentor in those Games, saying it was strange to see her working again, but Ray wasn’t sure what else she was meant to be doing. Victors didn’t have jobs, except to mentor the Tributes in the Games.

When the funeral procession happened once more, Ray was taken to it by his teachers, meaning for once he wasn’t stood watching it pass by with Shad. Instead, when the little girl and the boy passed them, Ray elbowed Jonah in the side, pointing at her. “My brother’s got a crush on her, you know. He thinks she’s really pretty.”

“I don’t think your brother would be able to win her heart,” Zabra insisted. “She’ll have higher standards than a fisherman.”

“But her parents handle dead bodies, how high could her standards really be?” Ray asked.

They were hushed by the teacher, and Ray shut up, watching as the procession passed and thinking of Shad. Was he watching it again, down by the docks, admiring the pretty girl who led it? Or was he in class now, because he looked too old to be a cute mourner, as Mom had said? He had to be as cute a mourner as Ray was, though, since they looked so alike, so Ray didn’t really understand why he was taken to the procession but Shad was not. Adults had weird thoughts sometimes.

After the funeral, Summer began, and there was no more school. Keeli said she couldn’t afford the tram fare to come down to the docks to play with Ray, and Jonah’s mother wouldn’t let him travel that far without someone else, and Jonah’s cousin never wanted to come down, and Zabra said she thought the docks were just too dangerous, so instead Ray spent the Summer with Shad and his old school friends. It was nice, nearly normal, and their friends welcomed him back warmly, as if he’d never been away. They had lots of questions about the school for Ray, which he answered, even if he didn’t want to think about school. It was more fun to chat about fishing, after all, especially when they took their rods out to the beach to fish and play in the sand together.

Shad had even gone spear fishing on his own a few weeks before the start of Summer, waking up with Ray then sneaking out with the trident before school began. He hadn’t successfully caught anything yet, but it did make Ray just that little bit jealous of Shad’s relative freedom.

After a day of swimming and making sand castles, Ray, Shad, Stone and Candiru found themselves lounging on the beach, trying to catch their breaths back, ready for the next game.

“Is Johnny okay after the Reaping, Stone?” Ray asked, trying to shake the sand out of his hair, and glancing over to where Johnny was sat on the beach with his friends, keeping half an eye on them. They weren’t old enough or big enough to go swimming by themselves yet, and since he and Shad only had each other and no other siblings, they either had to go to the beach with their parents or with a friend’s older sibling. Stone’s older brother had offered this time, which was great. Johnny was a very good swimmer. Candiru’s sister Altum wasn’t much older than them, so she wasn’t as strong as Johnny, and Ray didn’t want to think about getting into trouble when she was watching out for them.

“Yeah, he said he was really glad Camber volunteered for him, he said he didn’t want to get decapitated like he did,” Stone explained, turning to look at his brother. “Did you know Camber? He went to your school, didn’t he?”

“Not really,” Ray shrugged. “We don’t start practice fighting with the older kids until we’re ten, Jonah says.”

“Why do you fight the older kids?” Candiru asked. “Surely they’re always gonna win?”

“Miss says its so we can get practice in case we end up in the Games,” Ray explained. “So the first time we’re face to face with someone bigger than us trying to kill us isn’t in the Arena. So we’re not as scared.”

“But don’t the older kids hurt you when they play fight with you?” Candiru asked.

“That’s the point. We learn how to defend ourselves against someone bigger, and they learn that they can hurt little kids if they need to. ‘Cos eventually they’re gonna have to kill them.”

Candiru visibly shudders while Ray went back to playing in the sand, grabbing handfuls of it to pour into Shad’s hair when he wasn’t watching. “So, they teach you to kill each other?” Stone asked, to which Ray looked up.

“Yeah? You can’t win the Games if you don’t kill someone. Don’t they teach you that at school too?”

Clearly they didn’t, because Candiru and Stone looked very uncomfortable by the question, and the whole topic in general too. For the rest of the Summer, they refused to go out and play with Shad and Ray without their older siblings present, even when they weren’t on the beach, and Ray couldn’t figure out why.

Chapter Text

Ray’s second year at the Academy goes much the same as the first: interview training, combat training, going home and trying to show what he can to Shad, who listens as best as he can when he wasn’t that interested to begin with. Shad was much more interested in learning from their Dad, who kept taking Shad out to sea, or from Mom, who would let him take the family trident out spear fishing first thing in the morning if he speared from the shore, or let him use it in the water if he went out fishing with some of the older boys. Ray wasn’t allowed, and the older boys from the dockyards never wanted him to come along fishing with them, even though they were always inviting Shad.

Mom said it was because Ray made them uncomfortable when he talked about school, but they were the ones to ask about it. He wouldn’t tell them if they didn’t ask, and they were always talking about their school between them too. It just didn’t make sense to Ray.

Once or twice Ray and Shad snuck out to go spear fishing with just the two of them, without telling their parents, but they never caught anything, too scared to go swimming in the water without someone older watching over them, and too big and noisy to stop from scaring away the fish when they fish from the shore. It also didn’t help that they only had the one trident between them.

“So do you get to find out if someone’s volunteering for the Games if you go to the Academy?” Shad asked as he lazed on the nearby rocks, watching Ray stood stock still in the shallow waters. He’d exhausted himself trying to catch the fish and getting nowhere near to actually killing any of them, so he’d taken a break, letting Ray have his turn instead.

“No. Jonah says only two selected students in the final year get to find out, and that’s ‘cos they might volunteer themselves,” Ray explained. Shad propped himself up on one of his elbows, frowning at Ray.

“Which one’s Jonah again?”

“The nice one.”

“Wish your friends would come visit, it’d be cool to meet them,” Shad said wistfully. Ray grinned.

“To meet them or to trick them, because they’re not used to seeing us together?”

“Both,” Shad agreed with a grin. “You did tell them about me, didn’t you?”

“’Course. Zabra says she forgets that she’s never met you because I talk about you so much she reckons she knows everything about you. They know you’ve got a crush on the funeral girl,” Ray joked, to which Shad let out a loud groan.

“I don’t have a crush on the funeral girl! She’s just pretty! Like- like a wave, or food, you know? She’s just pretty. Can’t I like pretty things?”

A flash of scales grabbed Ray’s attention, glittering in the water, and without pause he thrust the trident at it, stopping the fish in its tracks. “Shad! Shad! I caught one! I caught one!” Ray yelled out, to which Shad rushed to his feet, throwing himself in the water to see it, only for Ray to lift the trident and the fish to go darting away. “No!”

Without pause Shad raced after it, diving head first into the water as Ray watched, waiting a tense moment, another one, before Shad surfaced with a gasp, something flapping and wriggling in his hands. He had grabbed it!

“Quick! To the beach!” Shad yelled, and Ray chased after him, trident still in hand. Shad dumped the fish into the sand, holding it down as Ray stabbed it again, this time hitting its heart successfully, and they watched at it stopped flopping and sat still in the sand. “We did it! We caught one!”

It wasn’t anywhere near as big as the ones Mom brought home, but it was a fish! A whole, real fish, just sat there in the sand, demanding to be taken home and eaten for tea. Ray threw the trident onto the sand, wrapping his arms around Shad, both laughing with delight. Their first fish! They were proper fishermen now!

“Imagine how Mom’s gonna react when she sees this!” Ray cheered. “What type of fish is it?”

“I think its an atka mackerel,” Shad explained, giving it a poke, a grin stretched from ear to ear. “Dad’ll know for sure.”

They made straight for home, Ray taking the trident, Shad taking the fish, skirting around the Peacekeepers as best as they could, until at last they found themselves back in their home, rushing in with such zest that the door slammed against the wall.

“Dad! Dad!” They yelled in sync as they rushed up to him, the mackerel held aloft in Shad’s hands. “Look what we caught!”

“Phwoar!” Dad yelled, taking the mackerel from their hands, smiling brightly from ear to ear. “Look at that little beauty! Who caught it?”

“We both did!” Ray said. “I got it with the trident and Shad grabbed it when it tried to swim away!”

“It’s got to be all of six inches long!” Dad joked, ruffling through Ray’s hair. “An atka, too! They’re not easy to find. Nicely caught, you two!”

“We’re real fishermen now!” Shad insisted, to which Dad scooped them both up in his arms as they squealed with delight.

“Absolutely! My two little fishermen,” Dad declared, before lowering them to the floor. “You two keep getting bigger, I don’t think I’m going to be able to lift you both together very soon.”

“Can we have it for tea?” Ray asked.

“I think we should. But lets keep it aside until Mom gets home, so you can show her, too,” Dad suggested.

Mom was just as ecstatic as he had been, even measuring the fish properly and weighing it too. The fish was a little too small to eat roasted, so instead it was chopped up into chowder, mixed with a fish Mom had caught and some vegetables she’d traded the other fish for, and that had been even better than a roasted fish, in Ray’s opinion, because that meant all four of them got to eat it together. And no-one even brought up that they weren’t meant to go fishing on their own.

Interview training brings up a new and strange skill that they’re taught: the teachers call it ‘enunciation’, but to Ray, it just sounds like they’re being taught really weird ways to say words. Jonah and Zabra get the hang of it really quickly, saying the words in new and funny ways seems to be easier when you already speak similarly, but Ray’s glad Keeli also seems to struggle with it.

“It’s important to be clear when you’re speaking,” their teacher had instructed them. “The Capitol population finds a broad District 4 accent difficult to understand, and if they cannot understand you, they cannot like you. And if they cannot like you, how can you find a better paying job or a sponsor to support you?”

Ray doesn’t quite get it, because everyone at home speaks normally and they all understand each other fine, but any time he tried pointing that out to his teacher, she would just tell him off for being disruptive. He didn’t like the way his own voice sounded when he spoke like that, so he refused to practice at home, speaking like a normal person around Shad and his parents, but they quickly started to expect him to talk in the new, weird way any time he was at school, and would even scold and punish him if he insisted on talking normally, so he does his best to speak the weird way at school and normally at home, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t bleed out.

“What was that?” Shad had asked, as Ray laid out on their shared bed while Shad played with his toys on the floor. Ray lifted his head to see Shad staring at him.

“What was what?”

“Why are you talking like that? All weird, like the town kids?” Shad asked. Ray shrugged.

“We have to at school, they tell us off otherwise,” Ray explained. “Too tired to talk normal.”

The tram had been stuffed full of Capitol tourists when he’d tried to get home, and rather than the hour and a half journey after the end of school, it had taken him three whole hours, and he was knackered.

“Why do they tell you off for speaking normally?” Shad asked.

“They say we’ve gotta talk weird for the Capitol to like us,” Ray stated. Shad’s face screwed up in thought.

“What, so you talk like that around all your new friends now?” Shad asked, and Ray nodded. “Well that’s not fair, that they can tell us apart from our voices now. How are we meant to prank them when I finally get to meet them if you talk different around them to me?”

“Never really thought about it,” Ray shrugged.

“You gotta teach me to talk like that!” Shad demanded. “Before I meet them!”

“Maybe later,” Ray offered.

He did his best, and Shad really did try hard to learn the weird way of talking, but it just didn’t sound right, no matter what Shad did. Maybe not fearing punishment meant he just didn’t have to learn it, maybe this new way was just too abnormal for a normal person to pick up, but Shad was really determined to keep trying. He said all the kids at school laughed when he spoke like that, which made Ray uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t express.

When the Hunger Games come around again, the school goes crazy over it once more, throwing the festival just before Reaping day, which Ray still wasn’t allowed to attend. The next day they go to the Reaping, and watch as two kids from in-land District get reaped, before immediately being replaced with two volunteer tributes, who leave the stage to massive cheers. Once again, its two kids from the Academy, and Ray starts to think its little bit more than just a coincidence.

This year the Academy really focuses on teaching them about the Arenas themselves, about different terrains and different environments. Everyone prefers to learn about the water-heavy, sea-front Arenas, but there’s so many more than that. They’re taught what the tributes are meant to be doing in the sixty seconds they have to stand still before they’re released, and Ray practices it until he has it down to each individual second. First thirty seconds: scan the arena, what does it look like, where would be the best place to run, what should they grab around their starting plates? Next twenty seconds: scan the fellow tributes around you. Who’s nearby? Who is likely to run over and attack you when they’re released? And the final ten seconds: nothing. Think of nothing. No distractions. When the Games themselves start, he shows it off to Shad and his parents as they watch from home, using their male tribute as a reference.

The Arena looks like one of the old warehouses from the dockyard, where the fish cutters work, but filled with all sorts of weird and dangerous machines that swing and move and turn on at odd moments. Tributes are crushed and cut to shreds, and the gore and blood makes Ray uncomfortable, and seems to really upset Jonah, too.

They lose both of their tributes to a trap set by another tribute, when they’re tricked into falling into a running machine.

There’s only one coffin at the funeral procession that year: the Capitol couldn’t sort out which body parts belonged to who, so they just sent them both home together. Even among the watching crowd, Ray can smell the stench coming from them, although the funeral family don’t seem to notice. There’s too many people reaching for the one coffin to really get everyone around it, with both of their families vying to hold it as it goes, and the whole thing makes Ray feel too sick to joke about Shad’s crush on the girl for once.

With the Games over, summer begins again, but by the time Ray made it home on the last day of school, Dad and Shad had already gone out on one of the boats without saying good-bye, leaving him home alone with just Mom. She takes him out spear fishing, but its not as much fun as when he goes out with Shad, and instead he ends up convincing her to let him go visit his friends from school most days of the Summer.

Keeli spends most of her days working at one of the local shops, she says she has to or the orphanage won’t feed her, and while Ray spent a few days playing with Zabra, she likes to help her Dad build the ships, so he spends most of the days with Jonah, who doesn’t have any responsibilities at all. But what he does have is a big, nice house, with lots of toys, and-

“A bike?” Ray asked, as Jonah wheeled it out from his garden. “How rich are your parents, Jonah?”

“It’s just a bike, Ray,” Jonah insisted. “It’s not that expensive. How poor are your parents?”

“No-one owns a bike back home,” Ray insisted. He’d seen the town kids riding them about from time to time, but they never rode them down to the docks, and never let anyone else ride them either. “It’s a town-kid thing.”

Jonah waved Ray to climb onto it, which Ray did hesitantly. It didn’t quite seem to want to keep standing up, even when he worked the pedals, it kept teetering over to one side, and Ray had to keep putting his feet out to stop himself from falling over. Jonah found it hilarious to watch him struggle, and after he laughs way too loudly when Ray stumbles off the bike, Ray dismounted and threw the bike to the floor in a huff.

“Go on! Laugh it up!” Ray shouted, crossing his arms on his chest. “It’s not easy!”

“It’s not hard, either,” Jonah insisted, and Ray felt his blood boil. “The little kids down the street can ride bikes better than you.”

“I’ve never rode one before! It’s stupid, this bike is stupid!”

“Don’t go in a huff just because you can’t balance properly, Ray,” Jonah snapped.

“I’m not in a huff because of that! You keep laughing at me!”

“Because its funny, you can’t ride a bike and little kids can.”

“Well why don’t I take you fishing back home so I can laugh at you messing everything up?” Ray asked.

“Because I’m not allowed down the docks, Mom says its too dangerous. And I don’t need to know how to fish,” Jonah insisted.

“And I don’t need to know how to ride this silly bike but you’re trying to make me and laughing at me because its hard,” Ray replied. “Why is it funny that I suck at the town kid things but it’s fine if you suck at fishing?”

“Because I don’t need to know how to fish, my family makes jewelry,” Jonah insisted. “It’s just weird because you’ve gotta be like, the only kid at the Academy who doesn’t know how to ride a bike.”

“I don’t need to know how to ride a bike!” Ray insisted. “Shad doesn’t know how to ride a bike either.”

“Yeah but he’s…” Jonah cut himself off, biting his lip.

“What? Shad’s what?”

“He’s a dockyard kid, they don’t know anything other than fishing,” Jonah insisted, to which Ray cross his arms and scowled.

“I’m a dockyard kid too, as much as my brother is.”

“Yeah, but you’re better than that, you go to the Academy, you’re smarter than they are. Hey, wait-” Ray had turned away and started walking off, with Jonah giving chase, the bike abandoned on the road. “Where are you going?”

“Home! I don’t want to play with you anymore!” Ray insisted, stomping his feet as he went.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Ray,” Jonah insisted. “You’re just so much smarter and nicer than those other kids are-”

“I’m not different to them!” Ray snapped, which made Jonah jolt to a stop. “Shad’s as smart and nice as I am, he’s exactly the same as me, he just doesn’t go to your stupid school. And I don’t want to go there either! I want to go to school with Shad! Stop talking about me like I’m any different to my brother!”

“I’ve never met your brother, Ray,” Jonah pointed out.

“So how can you say I’m smarter and nicer than him? He’s as nice as me!” Ray insisted, turning to leave once more, only for Jonah to rush over and grab his hand.

“No! Please don’t go, Ray! Please! I’m sorry,” Jonah groveled. “Please don’t go, I haven’t got anyone else to play with. I don’t have a brother like you do, please, stay.”

Ray sighed loudly, turning back to Jonah, seeing the tears pricking in his eyes, and feeling awful for shouting. “Shad’s nice. You’d like him, if you ever went down to the docks. He’s just like me. And I won’t let you insult my brother to my face, alright?”

“I’m sorry Ray, please don’t go. Why don’t we go into my house and get some sweets instead?” Jonah offered to which Ray sighed. He didn’t really want to go home: Shad was still out at sea and it was really boring at home without him there, but Jonah’s comments had upset him too much and he felt out of sorts. But his delayed answer only seemed to make Jonah more desperate. “Please Ray. I’ll show you all my toys and you can get first pick of what you want to play with, just please don’t go.”

“Alright, fine,” Ray conceded, as Jonah’s face lit up with delight, grabbing his hand and dragging him back towards his family’s house. Jonah’s family lived in their jewelry shop, with most of the ground floor taken up by the shop and the workshop, while his family lived on the floors above. It was a ridiculously large house for a family of four, easily more than triple the size of Ray’s house, and their house was pretty nice. But where Ray’s house was all wood and dark rooms that you could only really see clearly on a nice clear day, Jonah’s house was built of sandstone, with big windows that let in lots and lots of light, really letting all the jewelry they sold dazzle in the sun. Passer-bys often stopped to gaze in the windows, and the shop was a frequent stop for Capitol tourists who brought Jonah’s family lots and lots of more money for toys and sweets. Ray had been a couple of times before, but it was still so strange to see the hidden rooms of the shop.

Jonah’s father was working the front of the shop, ringing up some customers, and barely lifted his head to acknowledge Jonah when they came in, just glancing at Ray with a frown as he passed by. His mother was working in the back, making new jewelry when Jonah rushed in, wrapping her up in a hug as she yelped in surprise.

“Jonah!” She said, her voice harsh as she pushed him away. “What have I told you about knocking into me when I’m working?”

“Sorry Mommy, I just wanted to give you a hug,” Jonah insisted, while his mother simply tutted.

“I’m handling very delicate pieces and tools, can it wait, or at least give me warning?” She asked, looking up from her work and frowning at Ray. “Oh, its this little friend again.”

“Ray’s come back home for some sweets and to play, he didn’t like my bike,” Jonah explained, but his mother only frowned more.

“You didn’t let him play on your bike, did you? It better not be damaged,” she warned, to which Jonah shook his head.

“Ray’s always really careful with toys, Mommy,” Jonah said, but a sudden crying from a cot kept near the workshop rang out, with Jonah’s mother standing to her feet to go see to it.

“Come here, Ariel,” she cooed to the small baby, lifting her up into her arms, before turning back to Jonah and Ray. “Go play upstairs, but don’t let your friend near the pantry, alright?”

“I’m not a thief, Mrs Commodore,” Ray muttered beneath his breath, but thankfully she didn’t hear him, too busy fussing with her daughter. Jonah waited for a moment longer, but his mother’s attention had been stolen away, and he sagged, pulling Ray behind him upstairs.

“Wish I had a twin brother instead of a little sister,” Jonah muttered as he lead the way, a little sniff to his words. “Then maybe they’d play with me instead.”

Or just play and teach him alone, and leave you to wander the District, Ray thought to himself, but didn’t say it out loud. Wasn’t worth saying right now, after all.

Chapter Text

“So tell me Ray, how do you hope to win these Games?”

“Umm…” Ray said, swinging his legs beneath him. He hated these lessons. Interview training hadn’t been too bad last year, but now their teachers asked them really awkward questions, timed them, really pushed them to give the best answers they could too, and all the questions were so focused around the Hunger Games, it was uncomfortable. He glanced out to his class, all watching him in stony faced silence, and shifted in his seat.

“Ray, I need an answer,” his teacher insisted, and Ray flinched. “Then you can go sit with everyone else again.”

“Umm…” Ray tried again, turning to where Keeli was sat, miming reeling in a fishing rod. “I can fish, really well, better than the rest of the class. So… so I’d find some fish and eat them and live longer than everyone else?”

His teacher didn’t seem pleased with the answer, making a note on his paper before sending Ray back to his seat beside Keeli, who gave him a quick nudge and a smile that he returned. He really didn’t like public speaking…

“Jonah, would you like to come up and show everyone how its done?” Their teacher asked, and Jonah’s face seemed to glow with pride as he walked to the front of the classroom, sitting with perfect posture. “Hello Jonah, welcome to the Capitol. How are you finding it?”

“It’s really lovely and the people are so friendly,” Jonah replied, without any hesitations or moments to think. “It’s been really nice so far!”

“That’s lovely to hear. So, can you tell me a little bit about what we can expect in the Arena from you?”

“Well, I’m a good swimmer, and I’m really good at making things, too. And I know my way around a sword, so I can protect myself.”

It was a really weird way of playing pretend, to pretend they were getting interviewed like the tributes did before the Hunger Games, but their teacher said it was important. She also said that Jonah was really really good at it, but that Ray needed a lot more work to get it down, but it just seemed stupid to him. Why did they have to pretend to be in the Hunger Games, anyway? They weren’t even going to be in the Reaping for another two years!

Keeli was also pretty good, though unlike Jonah she wasn’t all sweet and nice, rather she acted all sad that she was in the Games. Zabra was about as good as Ray was, which he was quite pleased about. She also thought interview practice was a bit stupid, but Jonah loved it.

“Sebastian says once we’re twelve we get at least one interview practice with one of the mentors giving the questions instead of our teachers,” Jonah had explained at lunch, his face glowing as if he thought it was the best thing in the world. “And when we’re fourteen, we’re allowed to start picking and playing different ways to act in the interview other than sweet or scared.”

“It just seems silly to me,” Ray shrugged, tucking into the warm food they were served at the academy. It was really, really tasty, at least. Shad said the food at his school was a bad as ever, but Ray really liked the food here. Sometimes he thought about hiding some to take home with him for Shad to try… but it was too good to not eat it all. “Why do we have to practice like this now only to practice a different way in a few years time?”

“Because if we’re reaped at twelve or thirteen years old, sweet or scared will get us the most sponsors. And once we’re older, we need to work a bit harder to get attention, and sweet or scared don’t work as well,” Keeli explained. “Honestly Ray, don’t you ever listen in class?”

“Not interview practice,” Ray shrugged. “It’s too dull. I’d rather do more of the training stuff.”

“Anything that doesn’t require thinking, then?” Zabra teased, to which Ray sneered.

“You’re just jealous that you’re not as good as me,” Ray replied. Jonah was great at the interviews, Zabra at the normal lessons, Ray at the physical training, and Keeli was a pretty good all-rounder. Though Jonah was quickly catching up to him with swimming, and he was better with a wider variety of weapons than Ray was, but still, no-one could beat Ray in a fight when he was using his trident.

After lunch was training again, but when they walked into the gym, something was different. Normally the gym would be empty, with them having to pull out the crash matts and weapons themselves, but this time, the gym was already set up, and along the far wall stood the final year of students, watching them enter the room with hungry eyes, whispering to each other, pointing at them, whispering again. Sometimes a snicker rose from the crowd. They were massive, each and every one of them, towering over them with ease, and even at the far side of the gym, Ray couldn’t help but shudder. Why were they so big?

Their teacher lined them up against the wall, so they had nowhere else to look but at the older students staring them down while Ray tried hard not to shudder. These teens could rip their heads off even without a weapon in their hands!

“Okay class, up until now we’ve been training to fight with each other, and mostly we’ve been doing well,” his teacher declared, and Ray could swear she glanced over to him when she said well, because he knew he was doing the best. “But in the Arena, you won’t be fighting ten year olds. You’ll be fighting anyone between the ages of twelve and eighteen, and you need to be ready for that eventuality. If you want to come home, you might need to fight someone much bigger and stronger than you, and try to find a way to win. So from today, we’re going to have sporadic training sessions with the older students, so we can practice fighting older opponents.”

They had to practice fighting with these people?! They were nearly twice Ray’s size! Some of them were possibly even three times the size of some of his smaller classmates. The teacher for the older students spoke to them too, but he was so far away, Ray could barely even hear him speak, just the occaisional word made it the distance. “training”… “Desensitise”… “kill”… Never enough for Ray to figure out what they were being told.

Then their teacher pointed them to different crash matts, with Ray being put on the matt next to Keeli, watching as a simply giant eighteen year old boy came over to him, a nervous smile on his face. “Are you Ray?” He asked, and Ray nodded, biting back his anxiety. This teen was definitely twice his height with muscles to match: bigger than his Dad, even. Bigger than even Nangra, and Nangra was huge. “My name is Tiller, I’m told you’re the best in your class, then?”

“Um, yeah, I guess?” Ray ventured, while Tiller smiled, indicating to the weapon stash.

“Go pick out what weapon you want and we’ll have a spar, alright?”

Ray cautiously made his way over to the weapon stash, grabbing himself his favourite practice trident. They came in all different sizes and weights, but this one suited him best, and he always grabbed it first when he could. Keeli rushed up beside him, grabbing her favourite too, before rushing back to her crash matt before Ray could even utter a word to her.

Tiller was still waiting when he returned, telling him to wait while he claimed his own weapons, a sword and shield, before returning to the mat. “Right, remember, no falling off the mat, if either of us does, we need to stop, and we need to try and get the other in a position where we can kill them with ease, alright?”

“Alright,” Ray agreed quietly, to which Tiller gave him a nod, before rushing forward, using his shield to knock Ray onto the floor within seconds, the sword at his neck before he could even process the fight had begun, to which Tiller laughed, putting his sword away and offering Ray a hand up.

“Let’s try again, shall we?”

But it never goes more successfully, with Ray spending most of the spar on the ground, trying to roll out of the way of Tiller’s attacks, only to be stopped by Tiller’s feet, or the sword smacking against his body until he yelped out in pain. By the end of the first ten minutes, Ray could swear he must be bruised over half of his body, and he still hadn’t gotten anywhere near to hitting Tiller.

After the twelfth time Tiller hit him to the floor, Ray landing on the matt nearly head first, knocking himself dizzy, Tiller stepped back with a laugh, turning to where his friend was currently sat on Keeli next to them. “This is as easy as I thought it would be,” Tiller joked. “This is the best they have to offer us?”

Ray felt a bubbling anger in his chest, clutching his trident. Well, if he couldn’t get Tiller in a fight, then maybe… just maybe…

He clutched at his head, at the bruise that was forming where he lay on it, and pressed on it until it hurt, whimpering with the pain. That grabbed Tiller’s attention, who turned back to him with a guilty look. “Shit, I think I hurt him,” Tiller muttered, stepping back closer, reaching down a hand to help Ray up. “Come on, lets get you to the-”

Ray brought the trident up, thrusting the prongs at Tiller’s gut, hitting him hard enough for Tiller to grunt with pain, while Ray tried to follow it up. He couldn’t knock Tiller down onto the mat, he wasn’t strong enough for that, but the blow from the wooden trident was hard enough to wind Tiller, as he staggered backwards, trying to catch his breath. Tiller’s friend, still sat on Keeli, laughed out with surprise, then screamed in pain, as Keeli had used the distraction to kick him in his groin, shoving him off of her, and chasing him down with her own trident. Ray turned his trident around, smacking it against the back of Tiller’s knee, finally getting him down on the mat.

Finally!

Ray stepped back with a proud grin while Tiller tried to push himself to his feet. “Hey, that’s not fair, I already got you down! You can’t play a wounded gazelle gambit when you’re dead!”

“Did you check I was dead?” Ray shot back. “I didn’t hear a cannon. Did you hear a cannon, Keeli?”

“No cannons in here,” Keeli agreed, standing victorious over her sparring partner who was curled up in a ball on the floor. “Just two ten year old Victors.”

“What’s going on?” The older students teacher, Mr Erasmus, asked, jogging over to see them.

“Tiller’s upset that I won one,” Ray answered plainly, while Tiller scowled.

“No, I’m not. I’m upset that he cheated!”

“There’s no such thing as cheating in the Hunger Games,” Mr Erasmus answered. “Underhanded tactics are allowed, and to be expected when fighting younger tributes, Tiller.”

“But each match ends when we get one of them onto the mat!” Tiller insisted. “I knocked Ray down, then he pretended to be hurt to get my guard down, that’s not allowed!”

“No-one said we had to both be standing before a spar could begin again,” Ray offered.

“I’m with Ray on this one, I’m marking that as a win for him,” Mr Erasmus insisted, to which Tiller’s face dropped. “It’s about time we all swapped around, anyway. Take this as a lesson, Tiller. Don’t let your guard down just because you’re in school or fighting with a young student. They can outsmart you, given half a chance.”

Tiller did not look happy to be shown up like that, grabbing his weapons and walking off with his friend while Ray and Keeli jeered at them as they left. The next students weren’t quite so harsh, but they were hardly gentle either, knocking them about onto the crash mats with practiced ease, while Ray found himself gradually less and less able to fight back. By the end of the lesson, Ray was limping and sore all over, glad for it at least being the weekend and not needing to repeat the lesson again tomorrow, but he dreaded the long walk back home afterwards.

“I can’t feel my shoulder,” Zabra complained as they collapsed into a heap on the floor just outside the school doors. “I think I fell on it too much.”

“My bum hurts too,” Keeli whined. “I wanna sit but sitting hurts.”

“We don’t have to do that too often, do we?” Ray asked Jonah, who rolled his shoulders with a pained whine.

“I hope not. Oh, no, they’re coming back over,” Jonah complained, and Ray looked up to see Tiller and some of the older kids making their way towards them. Ray considered pushing himself up to stand, but he couldn’t face it, not right now.

“Hey, cheaters,” Tiller called out, the look on his face caught somewhere between a sneer and rage. “Enjoy training today?”

“No,” they all said in unison, which at least seemed to make Tiller pause, if only for a moment, before continuing.

“Well, you lot better get better and quick, because in barely two years time, it could be one of you in that Arena, you know. And right now, not one of you stands a chance,” Tiller warned. Keeli groaned.

“Right now I think I’d rather die than go through the Games with this sort of pain,” she complained, which received a round of agreement from them. Tiller rolled his eyes.

“You lot are kind of pathetic, you know. Even for little kids. It’s just a bit of pain. The risk is worth the reward.” The school bell rang, marking the end of the day for them and the start of the next lesson for Tiller and the other older kids. He sneered in their direction. “You’ll figure that out one day, I promise.”

With that he left them, while they tried to stand to their feet and make their way home. Zabra had the shortest distance to travel, but even she seemed to dread every step, and Ray had to stop repeatedly on the walk back to the tram for a rest. On the tram itself, he fought to stay awake, and when he alighted at the stop for the dockyards, the sounds coming from the Justice Square made him pause.

A harsh crack of a whip rang through the air, followed by a scream of pain, a scream Ray could almost recognise, and he cringed, turning to walk home instead, still limping all the way, half listening and counting for the number of hits the whip made. Ten, he reckoned. So that would probably be a first offence of illegal fishing, but without a weapon being found. So either someone had been pole or net fishing on one of the many owned beaches, or they’d managed to throw their fishing trident out of view just before being caught. He wondered who’d been caught, and his stomach sank at the thought that it might be Shad. Surely not… surely not…

Couldn’t be Mom, she’d been caught twice already: once when she was a teenager, once when Ray and Shad were about four and Dad was at sea. She’d been too injured to care for them, and their neighbours had stepped in to watch over and feed them for her so the District didn’t take them away. If she got caught again, it wouldn’t be a whipping she’d get this time… Ray shuddered at the thought. No, she wouldn’t get caught. Mom was too smart, too quick. She could swim like a fish and could outfox any peacekeeper. She wouldn’t get caught. Not their Mom.

By the time he finally made it home, nearly a whole hour later than normal with his painfully slow pace, Ray felt like collapsing onto the floor, feeling all the eyes of his family on him as he passed through the doorway. Shad was the first to reach him, pulling him into a hug that made Ray cry out in pain.

“Ray, what happened?” Shad asked. “Why are you limping? Why are you so late?” Ray tried to push him off of him, tears pricking in his eyes. “Ray?”

“Come here,” Dad instructed, picking up Ray and carrying him into the house, setting him down on the sofa as Ray started crying. “What happened?”

“We- we had to fight with the older kids in school,” Ray explained between sobs. “And they fight really hard!”

“Shad, go make sure the stew doesn’t burn,” Mom insisted, pushing Shad away and kneeling beside Ray. “Where does it hurt, sweetie?”

“Everywhere,” Ray gasped out between sobs, which only got worse as Mom pulled his shoes off of his feet. “Ow ow ow ow ow…”

“Looks twisted,” Mom muttered, moving Ray’s ankle as he cried out in pain. “But not fractured. Oh baby, come here,” Mom sat beside him on the sofa, pulling him in to a hug as Ray cried into her arms.

“It wasn’t fair, they’re all so big,” Ray insisted. “I had to fight Tiller and he’s bigger than Nangra is, and the one time I beat him he said I cheated, it wasn’t fair, how am I meant to win against someone who’s eighteen years old?”

Neither Mom or Dad had any answer to that, instead just trying to offer him soothing sounds and reassurances. Dad filled the washtub with cold sea water, saying that it helped with sore muscles, but it was freezing and Ray hated it, the shivering making the pain pronounced once more. Even Mom’s warm stew didn’t make it feel any better, and that night Ray was still in too much pain to even sleep in his bed, curled up so tight and close with Shad, so Dad took his space in his bed while Ray slept with Mom.

Come the morning, he was still in too much pain to really move, trying to settle back to sleep after everyone else and woken up and started their day. When he woke up again, he felt maybe just a little bit better, but his ankle still hurt and he didn’t want to move much. When he finally stomached trying to get out of bed, it was to the sight of Shad sat on the floor, playing quietly with their toys. He looked up when he heard Ray moving and gave his brother a smile.

“Mom said I had to let you sleep, her and Dad wanted me to go fishing with one of them to give you some peace and quiet, but I wanted to stay here with you.”

“Thanks, Shad,” Ray said quietly, inching over to the side of the bed, grunting with the pain. “It’s so unfair, I’m the best in our class at fighting but the other kids are just too big.”

“It’s stupid,” Shad agreed. “At my school you’re not allowed to play fight with anyone in gym class more than two years older than you, and not with anyone too much bigger than you, either. Stone says Johnny says it’s really awkward trying to find people to play fight with around the age of fourteen ‘cos some people have hit growth spurts and some people haven’t. Your school sounds so stupid all the time.”

“It is,” Ray agreed. “Do you know who was getting whipped when I came home last night?”

Shad nodded, biting his lip. “Bobbit. They caught him trying to sell one of his catches. Mom says that trying to sell your catch is the biggest risk, that’s why she handles selling or trading any extra fish I catch.”

Bobbit wasn’t exactly a nice classmate, so Ray found that he didn’t feel too sorry for him, but still. The whipping and the screams were awful to hear, and they could barely escape them down the docks: the noise carried too far.

“Was Tiller really bigger than Nangra?” Shad asked. “Nangra’s like, ten feet tall. He’s longer than an oarfish!”

“Taller,” Ray nodded. “Probably just as strong, too. He was really scary, and he kept knocking me down with his shield, it really hurt.”

“They’re not going to make you fight him again, are they?” Shad asked, to which Ray shrugged.

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

They played together at home the rest of the day, even when Ray suggested Shad could go down to the beach for a swim without him, Shad insisted on staying with Ray. They went to the beach to play in the sand the next day, at least, but Ray was still too sore to swim properly, and he was still sore the day after that, too.

Back at school, everyone complained to their teacher, who insisted it was important that they practice fighting with the older students, but promised that at the very least, they wouldn’t be fighting the eighteen year olds again until the next school year, which turned out to be true. The worst they had to fight was the sixteen year olds, who were still brutal fighters, but not as bad as the eighteen year olds, and Ray was only sore for a day after fighting them.

And so the school year passed by again. Shad went out on the boats with Dad a lot still, and practiced spear fishing with Mom before and after school, which meant Ray was quickly falling behind his brother on fishing skills, and people started to notice it, too. When Ray struggled to tie the nets down quickly, messing the knot the first time and having to start over, Nangra had burst out laughing, telling Dad, “Never mind needing to shave one, you can tell your boys apart now by how well they work, Wobbe.”

“I can do it,” Ray insisted, pulling the knot out as fast as he could, trying to not let his stinging eyes let the tears fall. Danio must have noticed, as he shoved his father away.

“Oh, leave him be, Pa. Ray works harder at school, he’ll make a fine fisherman one day, he just needs a bit extra patience. You always said, ‘Don’t rush an Odair, they’ll get there eventually, and do it better than anyone else’.”

“That’s because Wobbe only has two settings,” Nangra replied. “Slow or slower.”

“You’re the one who hired him for the boat regardless,” Danio pointed out.

“And you’re the one who’s going to keep him regardless, Dan.”

Back at school, they had plenty of training lessons, including fights with the older students, but sometime around June Ray noticed something odd with the class of thirteen year olds. A new face, of all things.

“Jonah,” Ray whispered as they took a break from the sparring, pointing towards the new kid. “I didn’t know they let students in later years of the Academy, I thought you had to start from eight.”

“No, you can join anytime,” Jonah assured him. “Twait must’ve been sent to the orphanage after his parent’s deaths, and then sent here.”

“It’s ‘cos Yawl died a few weeks back,” Keeli said nonchalantly. “So they sent Twait in his place. He’s not happy about it, though.”

“His parents died? That’s sad,” Ray muttered, glancing over to where Twait was also taking a break, taking a drink from a water bottle as he chatted with one of the other students in his class. He didn’t look particularly happy, either, and not being in the Academy left its mark, because Twait was getting beaten by more of them than anyone else.

“I heard he’s getting private training to get him in line with the rest of his class,” Keeli shrugged.

“Private training?” Ray asked.

“Yeah, like random people teaching him outside of school how to fight better, ‘cos he’s so bad at it.”

“I wonder what they’ll do with the tribute bodies this year, then,” Zabra muttered. “If the morticians are dead.”

Oh, so that was why Twait looked familiar: he was the boy leading the funeral procession with his little sister every year. Maybe they weren’t allowed to smile in a mortuary and that’s why Twait looked so miserable. Ray stood up, wincing slightly from his bruises, and made his way over to Twait as his friends watched. Twait looked up as he neared, rolling his eyes.

“I’m taking a break kid, go away. I’ll beat you up later,” Twait offered, but Ray shook his head.

“I don’t want to spar with you, I wanted to say hi.”

“Okay?” Twait asked, glancing towards his friends with a look of confusion. “Hi?”

“Hi. You and your sister lead the funeral processions for the tributes every year, right?”

“We did,” Twait said quietly. “Look, go back to your friends, I’m not in the mood to talk right now.”

“My brother’s got a crush on your sister,” Ray declared, which made Twait jolt back in shock.

“What?”

“My brother’s got a crush on your sister,” Ray repeated.

“O-kay? And why are you telling me this?” Twait asked, some of his friends snickering behind him.

“Because I can embarrass my brother tonight by telling him that I told you about it,” Ray offered with a shrug, to which Twait stared back at him in disbelief, before giving a snort, throwing back his bronze hair and really giving a hoot of laughter.

“I like you, weirdo. Tell your brother I said that if he’s as funny as you are, he can give wooing my little sister a go. But she has very high standards.”

They did end up sparring later that day, with Ray managing to knock him down a few times. Twait didn’t have a preferred weapon like the rest of his class did, he said he was still trying to get used to the feel of any of them, so he alternated which weapon he used to fight which child. He seemed a bit insulted when Ray offered him some pointers with using a trident, however.

At that year’s reaping, one of the town kids gets reaped, but a girl Ray didn’t recognise, but Keeli did, volunteered in their place, and Koi’s name was pulled, only for Tiller to volunteer for him. Koi manages to keep his calm until the crowd is told to disperse, before he rushes back to his parents, panic and endless relief written across his face. They walk home from the justice square, Shad grabbing Ray’s hand and pulling him through the crowd away from their parents.

“You had to fight him?!” Shad asked, pointing back towards the square. “He’s massive! And you won?”

“Only the once,” Ray confirmed. “Jonah said he’s the strongest fighter in the whole school, so maybe we’ll get a Victor this year.”

“That’d be great, remember the tins of fish they sent when Careen won?” Shad asked with a wistful sigh. “They were so nice.”

That year they focus on studying tributes not from their district: learning about what different districts usually supply as tributes, and ways to spot what a tribute’s little skills might be. Turns out, just like fish names being associated with the poorly paid fishermen in their district, other districts had similar tells, like District 12’s rich population usually being a lot more fair haired than their mine workers. Ray couldn’t help but wonder what the other districts taught their children about them.

The Arena this time is in a jungle, where large and exotic mutts rip apart everything in their wake: trees, ground, tributes… Tiller ends up as the leader of the pack: he’s loud, he’s pushy, and he seems to nearly always be at the throat of district 1’s girl tribute. Ray watches as Tiller uses the same technique he’d used on him to knock District 8’s twelve year old boy to the floor, cutting his head clean off of his shoulders. The sight sends Ray rushing to a bucket, vomiting their breakfast up as Shad follows him, trying to rub his back to comfort him. Ray doesn’t tell him that Tiller had used the exact same move on him in training, just how close he had been to his own death. Shad didn’t need to know that.

Tiller makes it into the top ten. The top eight. Reporters flock to the District and to the school, questioning anyone and everyone that they can, but Ray’s class is kept away from them, making them the first people to watch as Tiller made it into the top six. The final three. And then…

The girl from 9, she’d barely even registered on any of their radars, so quiet and unassuming, up until the moment she manages to sneak up behind Tiller after he’d exploded against the girl from 1 once more, having shoved her to the floor, knocking her unconscious. The girl from 9 slits his throat from behind before he even realises she’s there, his neck cut open from ear to ear, blood gushing all over the floor while he tries in vain to stem it, before he collapses to the floor. All it takes is for the girl from 9 to cut the unconscious girls throat, and suddenly District 9 has a Victor, for the first time ever. The Capitol goes nuts, but at school, everyone is morose.

There’s no funeral procession. The families of the tributes have to take care of their dead by themselves. The girl, who was sixteen, not eighteen like Tiller, has no family to take care of her, so instead some of the older boys from school carry her coffin down to the sea.

Summer is spent much like the last: Shad is whisked away on the boats by Dad, leaving Ray once more miserable and alone on land. He plays with Jonah as much as he can, but Jonah’s Mom hates him coming into Jonah’s house, and hates the thought of Jonah travelling down to the docks even more. She won’t even let Jonah go to the beach without adult supervision, and then refuses to take any time out of work to take him. Even when Ray’s Mom visits their shop to offer to take Ray and Jonah down to the beach for the day, Jonah’s Mom turns her away with harsh words that has Mom muttering under her breath about how rude and cruel she was. All Ray can do is visit Jonah and play on the streets outside the shop, and even that gets boring after a while.

Shad’s exhausted when he returns from sea, sleeping for most of the day they shore up, but the next day he’s back to playing on the beach with Ray, describing all that had happened on the boat, and trying to needle Ray for information on what happened back on land, but Ray has nearly no stories to tell him. Very little actually happened while Shad was away, other than that Ray missed him dearly every day.

Chapter Text

The next school year is dull. Ray fights the older kids more than he did the previous year, and starts fighting the kids below him, too. He starts learning who people in different classes are at least, now that he is forced to interact with them. Keeli seemd to know the most, since so many of them come from the orphanage, like Twait’s three friends that like to tease Keeli for being short whenever she gets near. Or the tiny girl in the year below them, the younger sister of one of Twait’s friends, who is a demon with a bow, hitting anything she is pointed towards and bragging that one day she’ll be better than her teasing older brother, or the tall girl in the same class who beats Jonah every time they scuffle. The interview practice doesn’t seem to be going any better than it was before for Ray, and the normal lessons they have trundle by without any real excitement. His teacher tells him to buckle down and study more, that his parents paid too good money for him to lounge about, but Ray feels that’s their problem, not his. He didn’t ask to be sent here, after all.

One day, a couple of weeks before his birthday, Ray finds himself wandering around home, looking for something to do. Shad was at sea. Keeli was working. Zabra never wanted to play. And Jonah’s mother was being her usual self. Which just left Ray alone, kicking the stones across the floor and feeling left out and miserable, until he felt a little hand slide into his, pulling his arm away from him.

“Ray!” Angel cried, beaming ear to ear. “Mom asked me to go to the shop to buy some vegetables, will you come with me?”

“Sure,” Ray agreed. “I’ve got nothing else to do.”

“Great!” Angel said, grasping his hand. “Mom says you go to town really often, but I don’t wanna go on my own, its scary.”

“It’s not that scary,” Ray scoffed, patting her head. “It’s just different. It’s really nice there, actually.”

They walked along the streets hand-in-hand, Angel jabbering away about whatever crossed her mind, a bright smile across her face all the while. Angel was nice, but a bit too chatty for his liking. You couldn’t go fishing with her, she chased all the fish away, and she couldn’t play rough like Shad did, and she wasn’t too fond of getting messy in the sand, either, but as someone to wile away a bit of time chatting and walking, she was alright company.

“I never see you at home anymore, Mom says you go to school really far away, is that true?” Angel asked. Ray nodded.

“I don’t want to, but Mom and Dad says I have to,” Ray explained. “One of my school friends lives in the jeweller’s, that’s why I go to the town so often.”

Angel frowned, thinking about that. “That doesn’t sound comfortable. I think all the metal pieces would dig into your back while you were sleeping.”

“He has a bed,” Ray assured her, grinning. “His Mom makes the jewellry.”

“Dad says the jewellers is stupid and overpriced and only for tourists, not for normal people,” Angel parrotted. “Is it?”

“Eh,” Ray shrugged. He never really looked at the jewellry; Mr Commodore always watched him like a dock cat watches the catch get brought in whenever Ray was in the shop itself, it wasn’t much fun to try and look at anything when being stared at constantly. “No one you know would be able to afford anything in that shop.”

Angel considered it for a moment, then shook her head. “Yes I do! I saw Aki with one of their rings on, I said it was very pretty and she said her husband got her it to say thank you for giving him his son.”

“Yeah, well, Danio’s got a bit more money than most,” Ray conceded. Dad said Danio was saving a lot of money to put towards sending that son to the Academy too, when the time came, but that was still five years away. He probably could afford to buy his beloved wife a pretty ring. Knowing how soft Danio got whenever he mentioned his wife on the boat, he would probably buy her all sorts of soppy things, too. Shad had described him as being like an ice cream and his wife the sun: you put them too close to each other and Danio gets all melty, it was almost embarrassing. “How is school going for you? Enjoying the lessons?”

“They’re alright,” Angel shrugged. “We get to hit each other with wooden sticks sometimes, I don’t like doing it much, though. Shad said it’s more fun to hit other people with the sticks than to be hit with them and then let me hit him as hard as I could with one, but I didn’t want to hurt him, so I didn’t hit him that hard,” Angel whittered away while Ray tried to hide his cringe. Of course, Angel had three more years before she was in the reaping, but it was just next year for him and Shad, so training had become really important to them both. Shad had also picked up the trident as best as he could, but he wasn’t very good with it. He couldn’t stand against Ray when they sparred even if he tried his hardest.

“You’re meant to hit people hard, that’s how you get better, and they get tougher,” Ray explained. “That’s what they tell us at school, anyway.”

“Mom says you’re not meant to hurt people though,” Angel pointed out.

“Not when it comes to training or the Hunger Games. You gotta hurt people then, that’s the point,” Ray explained. Angel considered it for a moment, before her attention cut back to something else.

“Did you hear that Pollock and Betta have another two twin daughters? That makes four daughters, that’s so many! Do you think his next baby is gonna be a twin too?”

“I dunno,” Ray shrugged, to which Angel frowned.

“But you and Shad are twins, right?” She asked, to which Ray laughed.

“That doesn’t mean I can tell when someone’s gonna have a twin,” Ray nudged her. “It just means no-one can tell me and Shad apart.”

“But Elly and Hali don’t look like each other, and Dad said that Agnatha and Amber don’t either. So why do you and Shad look like one person?”

“Because we were for a while, when we were babies in our Mom,” Ray explained. They’d learnt about it fairly recently in school, when they were getting taught about ‘reproduction’, their teacher had told them all about different types of twins not realising that Ray was half of a set himself.

“I’ve got a twin brother!” Ray had declared with excitement when the teacher had finished. “His name’s Shad and we’re identical! Not even our parents can tell us apart!”

“What, like, really identical? Not just look alike?” Zabra asked, to which Ray nodded.

“Dad reckons we must have swapped names like fifty times before we got old enough to tell them who’s who. And then he even reckons we swapped around a few times after then too, just to mess with him.”

“I can tell them apart,” Keeli bragged loudly. “But I don’t tell anyone how.”

“Genetically, that makes you two the same person,” the teacher had explained. “But environment has a large impact on personality and appearance too, so you may look less and less alike as you both grow older. But if you both end up having children, those children will socially be considered cousins, but genetically they would be half-siblings, and if you had a child when you’re an adult Ray, you’d call Shad his uncle, but genetically he’d be the same relation to the child as you.”

That had been really weird to hear about, but really cool too, and Ray had tried explaining it to Shad when he got home, but he mustn’t have explained it right, as Shad’s face screwed up in thought and he’d asked if that meant they would have to get married to the same person when they grew up.

“We were the same person then we split into two before we were born, and now we’re brothers instead,” Ray had continued. “Mom said it’s because she spent so long waiting to have a child, she got blessed with two at once.”

“Ah HA!” Angel cheered, pointing at Ray. “I knew it! I knew it! You and Shad ARE the same person! Dad said you’re not but you just said you are!”

“No, we are two seperate people,” Ray insisted. “We just used to be one person, back before we were born.”

“That’s not what I’m hearing,” Angel declared, to which Ray rolled his eyes. “Dad said you and Shad started a trend, that there’s more twins now than when he was little. Why’s that?”

“What? I don’t know, I’m not an expert on twins,” Ray insisted.

“But you are one!”

“Are you an expert on girls then?” Ray asked.

“Yep!” Angel declared. Well, he probably should have expected that one.

They did eventually make it to the shop, with Angel giving the shopkeeper the list of food her Mom wanted before asking Ray to help carry it home. He could hardly turn her down, or deny her the chance to go look at the pretty things in the jeweller shop window. There was a tourist couple looking through the window when they arrived, and Angel pressed her face up against the glass, cooing over the rings on display while Ray pulled her back slightly.

“Don’t touch the glass, Angel, Mrs Commodore gets mad if you make a mess anywhere in her shop,” Ray warned.

“But they’re so pretty,” Angel said. “What’s the little stones in them?”

“Oh, how sweet,” one of the tourists cooed, her shrill voice hurting Ray’s ears. “The little local children don’t know what pearls are!”

Angel pouted, because of course she knew what pearls were, they were just white and not the weird black stones on display, but Ray shushed her before she said anything. Getting into arguments with the Capitol tourists could lead to punishment, even arrests, from the Peacekeepers, it wasn’t worth it. Movement behind the window made Ray flinch as Mrs Commodore exited from the shop.

“Jonah isn’t coming out to play today, be on your way, Ray,” she warned.

“I’m not here for Jonah, my friend here wanted to see the pretty rings you sell, is that allowed?” Ray asked, watching Mrs Commodore’s lip twitch. He knew it wasn’t, normally. Mrs Commodore hated having anyone from the dockyards ‘window shopping’ at her shop, she said it made the place look untidy, but if she was to chase away two small children in front of tourists, they might spread word about it and lose her business.

“Miss Aki’s ring is really pretty, Miss jeweller,” Angel said. “I hope I have a husband someday who would buy me a pretty ring like that.”

“If you would be so lucky,” Mrs Commodore muttered. “Don’t you two have a home to be at? Surely your mothers are awaiting those groceries?”

“Nuh uh. Mom said I can look at the pretty places in town if I want because I helped out,” Angel explained, while Mrs Commodore scowled at her, making Ray grab Angel’s hand, tugging her away.

“Come on Angel, let’s go see Ralee’s flowers, instead. They’re pretty too,” Ray suggested, to which Angel pouted, but followed behind without further dragging, and while Ray didn’t look back, he could feel Mrs Commodore’s eyes burning into the back of his head every step of the way. He wasn’t sure what it was that he’d done to upset her, but he had little desire to try and convince her to like him despite it.

He played with Jonah often still, but Jonah never brought him back to the house, always playing out on the streets instead. He said he would sneak out to play with Ray, that his Mom didn’t know he’d left the house, and Ray told him that that was dangerous, that you were always meant to tell your parents when you left, but Jonah reckoned his Mom didn’t even listen when he told her he was going out. It was sad, really. Ray’s Mom always greeted him with a hug when he came home, but Jonah’s mom never did, no matter what.

Jonah liked to share his sweets with Ray, but Ray didn’t particularly care for them, often pocketting the sweets to take home to share with his parents and Shad instead. But no-one in his family had a sweet tooth like Jonah did, so often the sweets found their way circling out from the Odairs further and further, finding their way into neighbouring children’s mouths. None of them knew it came from the jeweller’s pockets via Ray’s sweaty hands, but no-one complained. Free sweets were free sweets, after all.

Keeli rarely, if ever, was free to come out and play, and when she could she had to stay close to the orphanage she lived at. “They get mad at you if you go too far away for any reason other than going to work,” she’d explained once as she and Ray had sat on the pavement just outside the building.

“That’s sad,” Ray muttered. “When do they let you go further away so you can come play at the beach with Shad and me again?”

“I don’t think they ever do,” Keeli shrugged. “I think the older kids just stop caring about not getting into trouble.”

There’s quite a number of kids from the orphanage who go to the Academy, but even more who have to take tesserae too. A lot of things about the orphanage just doesn’t make any sense to Ray: surely they could just not send some of the kids to the academy and use the money to buy food instead, but Keeli just says that the orphanage gets other people to pay for the kids to attend the Academy, which Ray finds even weirder. Who’s paying for kids who aren’t your own to go to such an expensive school?

Sometime in early Spring, Shad had insisted on going out spear fishing with Ray again, sharing their mother’s trident, fishing in the sea once more. This time, though, Shad was confident enough to swim out with the trident, to try and spear the larger fish, while Ray still found himself confined to the shallows, and not fishing for as long as Shad could do it, having to swap out turns with his brother more often than Shad did. By eleven, Shad had managed to catch two fish, while Ray was still struggling to catch his first.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Ray complained as he waited, poised, for a fish to swim by, while Shad sunned himself on the beach nearby. “You being so much better than me, just ‘cos Mom keeps taking you out fishing all the time.”

“You need to swim out,” Shad insisted. “It’s much easier if you try and spear them under the water.”

“How? You need to paddle, and hold your breath, and keep the trident on target, how is it easier?” Ray asked, jabbing the trident at a fish and missing. “Damnit!”

“The water messes with what you see,” Shad insisted. “It’s got something to do with the light. Air bends it differently to what water does, so the fish appear in one place when you look from above, but they’re actually in a different place when you put your head under the water. Mom says its like, really advanced science or something, but we get to learn it early ‘cos we need to use it.”

“It’s still not fair,” Ray insisted, wading out from the water and collapsing onto the sand next to Shad. “Dad takes you out fishing all the time and Nangra teases me for not being as good as you on the boat but I just don’t get the chance to learn, I’m always learning stupid, useless stuff like how to please a crowd or shoot a bow or something. I wish he would take me out more often.”

“Dad got into an argument with Danio about it on the last trip, you know,” Shad said, which made Ray frown. “Danio reckons he needs to teach you more too, but Dad says you’ve gotta stick in school so you can get a better job than he has, make more money, be more successful, or something.”

“But that means Dad thinks you shouldn’t be successful, ‘cos he’s always taking you out of school to go on Nangra’s boat,” Ray pointed out.

“Danio and Dad got really heated about it, Dad said he couldn’t understand since he’s only got the one kid and Kitty and Gar had to drag them apart. Nangra said that was a rich comment coming from Dad,” Shad explained with a frown. “I don’t think Danio actually likes Dad very much, Nangra said Dad was lucky they had been friends for so long else Danio might have thrown Dad overboard.”

“I hope Danio doesn’t throw Dad overboard…” Ray muttered, to which Shad shoved him affectionately.

“He won’t. Nangra says Dad’s one of his best men, and Danio says I’m one of his best children, too.”

“Because you’re better than me,” Ray muttered, wrapping his arms around his legs.

“Only at fishing. You’re better than me at fighting, at public speaking, at talking weird, at school… You’ve got all sorts of stuff you’re good at, but I just have fishing. Gar says I need to get a hobby, then laughed when I said that spear fishing was my hobby. That, and playing with you.”

They were told to get hobbies at school too. They said anything at all could be useful, you just could never tell what. But Ray wasn’t sure playing pretend with Shad would count as useful to his teachers. Shad’s face screwed up, and Ray nudged him to get him to speak.

“So Jonah…” Shad said with a frown. “You play with him when I’m at sea, right?”

“Yeah,” Ray nodded.

“Is he your best friend?” Shad asked, to which Ray shook his head.

“No way, you’re my best friend, even if we don’t play together as much as I want to any more. You’re way more fun than Jonah, and your Mom doesn’t think I’m gonna rob her blind anytime I go near her house,” Ray assured him, to which Shad smiled.

“Good, you’re my best friend too. Angel was telling me how jealous she was of us the other day, said she wished she could be born with her best friend right there already rather than having to pick one out,” Shad explained. “I told her its great, you’re the bestest friend in the whole world.”

“Nuh-uh, you’re the bestest friend in the whole universe,” Ray insisted, scruffing up Shad’s hair as Shad pushed him off with a huff.

“Changed my mind, I hate you now,” Shad joked, to which Ray pushed him down into the sand, pinning him to the floor. “Ray!” Shad laughed, struggling to break free and failing spectacularly. “Get off!”

“Not until you admit you love me,” Ray demanded, to which Shad burst out laughing again, struggling harder, getting nowhere but covered in sand.

“No way! I hate you forever and ever and ever,” Shad laughed.

“Admit it, you love me,” Ray demanded, while Shad continued laughing, finally going lax.

“Fine! Fine! I love you, now get off of me, you big dolt,” Shad demanded, and Ray did, finally letting Shad sit up in the sand. “Bet Jonah doesn’t play wrestle with you like I do.”

Jonah was a damn sight better at wrestling than Shad could ever be, but Ray didn’t say that, instead grabbing the fish Shad had caught and standing to his feet. “No-one is like you, Shad. You could search all twelve districts and not find anyone like you at all.”

“Except you,” Shad insisted, taking up the trident. “You and me, a matching set, eh?”

Ray nudged him with his shoulder and they started the walk home, fish stowed in their bag, the trident carried between them, ready to be hidden the moment they saw a peacekeeper pass by. Boats were moving in and out of the docks, Ray and Shad trying to identify them as they passed them, until they saw the flag being flown by one of them.

The District flag, flown upside down, on a boat travelling into the docks far, far too fast.

“Fast distress,” Ray noted, Shad nodding. “You take the first street, I’ll take the second.”

They broke into a run, rushing towards the nearest houses, Shad taking the first street, Ray taking the second, yelling as loud as they could. “Fast distress! Fast distress!”

Ray reached the first house, pounding on the door as hard as he could, rushing to the next, yelling as he went. People had already heard the commotion, were already leaving their houses, people who were too far from the sea front to have seen the boats hearing the yells and starting the call from the far side of the road. Nangra was already rushing out of his house, Danio hot on his heels, when Ray reached it.

“Who is it?” Nangra asked, and Ray shook his head.

“Didn’t see, just saw the flag,” Ray admitted, but Nangra nodded anyway, patting Ray’s shoulder before rushing off, following the rest of the crowd. Distress flag meant the ship needed help when it pulled into port, that there was someone dead or dying on board. To rush into port at the speed the ship was going at, they had to believe whoever was injured wasn’t beyond saving yet. Any distress flag would pull at least half of their neighbourhood down to the docks to help, but a fast distress always drew a bigger crowd.

By the time Ray had reached the end of the street, the message had passed on faster, other people were banging on doors, getting people to come to the aid, and Ray finally caught up with Shad, both slightly out of breath, desperately trying to reclaim it as they went to follow the rest of the crowd. There wasn’t much help they could offer: they were too young to really help with first aid, and too tired to go running to take messages again, but they could hold little kids for parents who were trying to help at least.

By the time they’d caught up, the boat was pulling into port, ropes thrown over the side of the ship, instructions and demands being yelled so loud and so fast trying to keep up with them was making Ray dizzy. Those on land helped secure the boat as quickly as they could, gangplanks being lowered with an almighty bang, while the people on board carried someone down from the ship onto land, a crowd of hands rushing forth to help the person down as quickly and safely as possible.

“That’s Candiru’s dad,” Shad muttered, and Ray swallowed hard. He was conscious, at least. Dad always said he never fancied the chances of someone who came off a ship injured and unconscious, but Mr Bowline was ashen, his hands shaking, and he had to be carried away by the crowd towards the apothecary, not walk there himself. In minutes he was gone, some of the crowd following after him, while Ray and Shad stood in awkward silence, watching them leave. Poor Candiru…

They stayed there for a little while, until the remaining crowd started to disperse and Mom spotted them, pulling them both into a tight hug before leading them back home. She talked about how they’d done the right thing, getting everyone’s attention, how proud she was of them, but all Ray could think about was that Candiru had gone fishing with her mother on her boat just that morning. She wouldn’t even know what had happened for weeks. And he felt so awful for her.

They’d just made it back to the house when they heard footsteps following behind them, a voice shouting out, “Gala! Hello, do you mind?”

They all stopped, Mom smiling as Aki made her way towards the house, a big basket of food on one hip, her young son clinging to her free hand. Aki indicated towards the docks. “Who was it? I saw my husband rush off but not who he was taking.”

“Barra Bowline,” Mom said, to which Aki nodded. “I see you’ve been busy.”

“Danio might think he can teach Tali all he needs to know, but there’s more than one way to feed a family,” Aki declared. “Do you mind if we come in for a spell? Tali’s not used to all the walking.”

“Not at all,” Mom assured her, waving all four of them in. “Poor bairn, has your mother been running you ragged?”

Aki’s son, barely even three years old, didn’t answer, just clung to Aki’s leg and buried his face in the fabric of her trousers. Aki wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Sorry, don’t know where he gets it from but he’s not really a chatty kid.”

“Wobbe said,” Mom nodded, waving Aki towards the kitchen table. “He reckons your house must have a daily word limit and Danio uses it all, so Tali has nothing spare to say.”

Aki sat down at the table, trying to encourage Tali to sit with her, but he continued to cling to her, now to her sleeve, only occaisionally glancing up to bury his face again. Ray honestly couldn’t say he’d ever heard the kid speak. He couldn’t even tell if Tali was his name or just a pet name his mother gave him, wasn’t like the kid would ever tell him if he asked. And Danio thought sending him to the Academy was going to be great? The teachers were going to love trying to teach him to talk to a crowd.

“We thought we’d bring some food around,” Aki offered, pulling out some of the berries from the basket and placing them on the table. “As a sort of peace offering after the fall out Dan and Wobbe had on the last trip.”

“There’s no need,” Mom insisted, while Aki shook her head. “No, really, Wobbe feels awful for it, he’ll feel even worse if you’re bringing us food to make peace.”

“Dan feels just as bad, I promise you,” Aki assured her. “He didn’t mean to get Wobbe that worked up. Let’s bury the hatchett and move on, starting with a healthy snack.” Aki picked out one of the berries, offering it to Tali, who shook his head into his mother’s clothes. “Come on, sweetie. They’re really good.”

“Well I’ll have one if they’re going spare,” Shad declared reaching across the table to grab one as Ray followed suit. “You should take one of our fish home, we caught two, as an exchange,” Shad continued as Ray put the bag onto the table, pulling out the fish. Aki smiled.

“Why, thank you. What do you want to say to the Odair twins, Tali?” Aki prompted him, but Tali didn’t say anything, just staring wide eyed at them, his mouth slightly agape. After a minute or two of silence, Shad spoke again.

“You know, Tali. If you keep staring at Odairs long enough we split into two,” he teased, Tali’s brow furrowing. “No, really. That’s why there’s two of me,” Shad pointed between him and Ray, who stepped nearer to Shad with a grin. “If you stare at both of us hard enough, you’ll make four of us instead!”

Tali’s eyes went wide before he buried his face into his mother again, while Aki laughed, running her hand through Tali’s hair. “Pay him no mind, sweetheart, the twins are just teasing you,” she assured him.

“There’s really only way to prove it though,” Ray continued. “Go on, keep staring. Mom and Dad always wanted more kids.”

“No, we don’t,” Mom shut it down as Ray and Shad burst out laughing. “Honestly Aki, stick to one if you can. Little boys are all cute until they grow big and start ganging up on you.”

Aki laughed, but there was a lot less humour in it this time, pulling Tali closer to her as she sorted out which berries and roots she wanted to leave them, before taking the smaller fish Ray had laid out on the table. “Well, we’d best be off, Gala. There’s a lot to teach about cleaning foraged foods too, isn’t there, Tali? We’ll see you around.”

When Ray regailed his classmates with the story of grabbing the neighbourhood’s attention at school the next day, very few people even seemed interested to hear it. Keeli did, asking Ray about as much details as he could give, about who was injured, and how, and who helped, and why, and Jonah listened out of politeness more than anything, but he did needle Ray for more information on who everyone he mentioned was. When Ray explained that Candiru was one of his friends from Shad’s school, Jonah got a little quiet and awkward and wouldn’t say why.

The Reaping came around once more, towards the end of the school year, and this time Ray felt a lot less blazé about it. In just a year’s time, he’d be in the Reaping, as would Shad and all their friends, and the reassurance he could give himself all previous years that he wouldn’t be in the reaping for ages fell flat this year, because if he really cared to, he could count down to it with ease, yet when their teacher actually gave a number it made Ray feel sick to his stomach.

Jonah seemed excited to get to go to the party the school put on the night before, but Ray certainly wasn’t. It hardly felt like a fair consolation for risking their death, which was made all the worse on the reaping day itself.

They stood on the outside of the square, listening for the names being called, and Ray felt sick as he recognised the girls name. Candiru’s older sister, Altum, took to the stage, barely even fifteen years of age, while the boy who was reaped, Roach, was seventeen, from the ship building yards, but he looked way too small and thin, nothing like the well-built teenagers from their neighbourhood, or the well-fed kids from town. He shook on the stage just as much as Altum did, and when they called for volunteers, only the wind spoke up, and after a handful off too long minutes, the escort declared that they were the tributes, dragging them off stage and out of sight, while Ray felt too dumbfounded to speak.

He watched Candiru’s family rush forward, the crowd parting to let them through, Candiru’s face awash with tears, her father still trying to make sense of the crutches he had to use to walk, wobbling with every uncertain step, his wife trying to help him along, carrying Candiru’s little brother in her arms. Ray grabbed for Shad’s hand as he watched, Shad taking it, squeezing it, as they watched until Mom pulled them away.

“Do we go see Candiru later? See if she’s okay?” Ray asked, but Mom shook her head.

“Give them some peace today,” Mom insisted quietly, waiting until they were home to speak again. “The Peacekeepers will mostly have emptied out of town now, with the Capitol officials gone. Shad, do you reckon you can go catch a fish for the Bowlines?”

“Right now?” Shad asked. Normally they fished early in the morning, before too much activity in the water chased them off, before the daylight got too strong that the peacekeepers could see them swimming, but Mom nodded.

“They need something else to eat other than tesserae tonight. Altum only had to take it because of their father’s injury, they need something to eat that didn’t get her killed.”

“She could win, though,” Ray offered, but the look on Mom’s face said she didn’t agree with him.

They went out together, Ray acting as a spotter for Shad so he didn’t need to worry about the peacekeepers seeing him, returning a few hours later with three fish. For once they hadn’t uttered a word between them all the time they were fishing: Ray couldn’t stop thinking about how terrified Altum and Roach looked as they were dragged away, he felt sick to his stomach just at the memory, and he knew from the look on Shad’s face that he felt the same. They brought the fish home, but Mom sent them straight back out to hand all three over, and they could hear Candiru’s crying from halfway down the street. It felt awful to interrupt them, as they knocked on the door, waiting for Candiru’s mom to appear, her eyes red, her lip still trembling.

“We brought you fish,” Shad offered, handing all three over. “For tea.”

“Thank you,” Candiru’s mom whispered, taking the fish and closing the door on them without another word, sending them back on their way home.

At school the next day, there’s all the usual buzz, but Ray finds that the sounds and excited faces just make him feel worse and worse and worse. Even by the time the first bell rings, he feels sick to his stomach, and people must be noticing it.

“Ray? Is everything alright?” Jonah asked as Ray flinched at the passing comment from some of the older students about how ‘lacklustre’ their tributes were this year.

“Altum Bowline. She’s my friend’s older sister,” Ray explained. “I don’t wanna learn about the Hunger Games this year.”

“Me neither,” Zabra piped up, her own face drawn tight. “Roach works for my Dad. He’s always nice to me. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

For a moment, Ray meets Zabra’s eyes, and for once in the three years he’s known her, there seems to be just the smallest understanding between the two of them. Just this once, the only person in their group who knows what he’s going through is Zabra, and he doesn’t feel any happier for it.

In the first lesson their teacher decides to teach them about the odds system, explaining how its calculated, explaining what it will mean for both tributes, how different things will change the odds, how likely they are to get sponsor gifts. At this stage, with just the reaping to go by, its mostly determined by size, age and district. District four gets the third best odds by default. Larger tributes score higher than smaller tributes. Eighteen year olds more than twelve year olds. Volunteers more than the reaped. The odds will help sponsors choose who to back, decide who is most likely to win, although long odds win from time to time.

Then she shows them the odds as it currently stands, with Roach pinned as tenth best, and Altum… Altum… They think the thirteen year old boy from District 7 is more likely to win than Altum…

It just becomes too much for Ray, as the stress builds and builds and builds, his mouth filling with saliva, barely able to bite back a yawn that his teacher scolds him for. “This is people’s lives we’re talking about here, Ray,” she snapped as Ray shifted in his seat. “Don’t yawn about it.”

“Miss, I need to go to the bathroom,” Ray whined, running his hands down his arms. He feels so cold all of a sudden, why was he so cold? His teacher frowns.

“No, Ray. Class just started, you should have gone before the bell.”

“I don’t need to wee,” Ray insisted, swallowing. “I’m going to be sick.”

The teacher stares at him in disbelief, until the first wave of retching rises up and she demands Jonah drag him to the toilet, which Jonah does, only just managing to make it to the sink before Ray’s breakfast greets him again, Jonah nervously patting his back. There’s another wave, and another, but after the third it seems to be finished, with Ray sitting on the bathroom floor, his eyes streaming.

“Are you okay?” Jonah asked softly. “Do you need to go home? I’m always happier at home when I’m sick.”

“I’m not sick,” Ray whispered. “Dad does it too, when he’s really worried about something. So does Shad. Dad says its a family thing.”

“You vomit when you’re stressed?” Jonah asked. “What are you stressed about?”

“I don’t want Altum to die,” Ray said quietly, wrapping his arms around his legs, trying to rock himself for comfort. “I don’t wanna watch her die. I don’t wanna learn about how likely she is to die. I want her to come home so Candiru’s family are happy again. I don’t want to be here!”

Ray broke down into tears, with Jonah pulling him into a hug. “It’s alright, she’s got Mags this year. Mags will take good care of her. Mags always mentors District 4 if we have a non-volunteer. She’ll be okay.”

Mags. Their second oldest Victor, younger only to Zander. Most accomplished mentor too, by all accounts. Every year they had two volunteers, Mags would herself volunteer to mentor a different district, one that didn’t have any mentors for their tributes. Their teacher said she was the only Victor in Panem who could get away with bringing home Victors for other districts, because of her role in the Academy and the district’s love for her meaning they’d forgive her for bringing home a Victor for someone else, which she did do pretty well. But if they had no volunteers, Mags would stick with their district instead. Altum had Mags. She has the sixth worst odds in the whole Arena, but at least she had Mags…

Despite his assertions that he wasn’t sick, only stressed, Ray was sent home early, having to travel back on the tram still stinking of vomit, meeting Aki on the way back from one of her foraging trips. Tali wasn’t with her, no doubt left at home so she could get more food, and she gave Ray a sympathetic smile as she saw him.

“You know the Bowlines, right?” She asked softly, to which Ray nodded. She handed him a basket of tubers. “Can you deliver this to them for me? I don’t know them very well, but we have to look out for each other. Especially this time of year.”

He delivered it on the way home, knocking on the door and leaving the basket in front of it and leaving before the door was opened. His home is empty when he arrives at it, but only for ten minutes, when Shad walks back through the front door having also been sent home early for the exact same reason. Neither of them feel up to playing any games together for once, so instead they just tidy the house in silence.

They watch the parade that night as a family, Ray and Shad both cuddled up in their parents’ arms, watching as Altum is paraded around dressed in a silly sailor costume. The next day they return to school, and the teacher gives Ray permission to leave if he needs to to vomit, but makes it very clear that “You need to outgrow that, and quick. If you find yourself in an Arena, something like that could get you killed.”

Despite yesterday, Ray finds learning about odds and sponsor gifts surprisingly fun. He was never a big fan of maths, he could calculate exactly what he needed and couldn’t see much point in learning more, but odds and gift prices turn out to be something he almost has a knack for. Zabra teases him for finding the most useless skill for someone to have while actually in the Arena, but considering he didn’t ever want to go into the Arena, it’s not as scathing of a remark as she hoped it to be.

They watch the training scores get announced, too. Roach scores a six, Altum scores a seven, and Ray tells his family that her odds probably just shot up as a result, and he’s right. When they go over the odds the next day, Altum’s gone from sixth worst to twelfth best, and Roach has dropped down by a single place too, putting them near enough next to each other in the prediction tables.

“How did a fifteen year old score higher than Roach, anyway?” Zabra demanded when they met up the next morning at school. “He’s much stronger than her!”

“Altum goes spear fishing, like my Mom, me and Shad,” Ray explained. “So she’s gotta be good with a trident, even if she hasn’t trained much. What weapon do you think Roach will use?”

“I don’t know, he’s only really good with a hammer and nails,” Zabra shrugged.

The older students put on fake interviews for them to watch the day of the interviews, dragging random students up to answer a long list of possible questions. There’s not a single Victor in sight since they’re all in the Capitol for the Games. Next year they’d start training with the Victors themselves, although Ray couldn’t tell if that was going to be a good thing or not, but at least Jonah seems to enjoy the interview practice, volunteering to go up on stage and show off his skills. Ray hides behind the kids in front of them, instead.

Roach tries to come across as quite calculating in his interview, a tactician, smart, but he flounders one of the questions Caesar asks so hard that the crowd laughs at him, and Ray can see the tears in his eyes when he retreats at the end of his interview. Altum is cold, detached. She equates the Games to a fishing trip, her competitors to fish trapped in a barrel. She’s terrifying on the stage, especially in the dark, pointy dress she wears. She’s nothing like the girl Ray knew from home, who would always come over to chat and play with them if Candiru asked, who would hug Ray if he snuck her a sweet from Jonah’s house, who ran over to help kids she didn’t know who got injured at the beach. She’s so different on the screen, it makes Ray uncomfortable.

School is cancelled for the start of the Games; Jonah says they keep the building open so that students can watch the start together if they want, but Ray and Shad head to the justice square with Stone to watch the start instead. Candiru and her family stay at home, but most of their neighbours head to the square, to save on having to pay for the electricity to watch the blood bath on the television. Johnny and his friends stick close to them, to offer comfort and strength if they need it, or at least to get the three of them out of there quick if necessary.

They show all the tributes reactions to the Arena before they show the Arena itself, and this year the Arena is tall. Like really, seriously, tall. Thousands of trees stand throughout the arena, hundreds of feet tall, and all the tributes start right on the ground. The Cornucopia has to be at least a hundred feet up itself, with bridges, ropes, ladders, all sorts criss-crossing across the tree bark to get tributes up to it. Some of the trees have platforms to stand on, most are covered in spikes too. There’s no signs of an ocean or a lake like their tributes always like to find, but Altum doesn’t seem deterred, and when the gong chimes, she’s off like a shot, ignoring the ropes and ladders and making her way straight up the tree instead.

No-one in the crowd is surprised, cheering her on as she navigates the branches as fast as she would a ship mast, the shots they show of Roach showing him doing exactly the same, and the two of them are among the first tributes to reach the cornucopia. But they’re not the first. The tributes from District 7 beat them to it, the boy rushing towards Altum with an axe, but she darts out of the way, grabbing one of the tridents, blocking his attacks while Roach grabs his own choice of weapon, a hammer, and smashes the boy’s skull in, before Altum uses her trident as leverage to throw him out of the Cornucopia, falling a hundred feet to his death. Shad flinches beside Ray, and Ray squeezes his hand, but Altum and Roach are already grabbing backpacks and rushing from the blood bath together, with Roach receiving a stab to his ribs from the girl from 7 before they get clear of the fighting just as its about to get worse. Ray drops his hand from Shad’s hand and squeezes his shoulder instead.

“They’re out of the bloodbath, that’s good. They’ll be safe for a little while.”

“Altum killed that boy,” Shad whispered, his lip quivering. Ray stared at him in disbelief.

“Shad, that’s a good thing,” Ray insisted, to which Shad turned to stare at him as if he’d grown a second head. “She’s shown she’s strong and can kill, so her odds are going to improve.”

“Who cares about her odds? We’re not allowed to bet on her,” Stone insisted.

“If she’s got good odds she’ll get more sponsors and it’ll be easier for her to win,” Ray explained. “If she shows she can kill people early then the people in the Capitol will send her gifts so she can keep surviving. It’s a good thing. And that boy had better odds than her, so her odds will go up even more.”

He still gets odd looks from everyone around him, even some of the adults nearby, but it was the truth, and Shad takes his hand again, squeezing it for good luck.

The next day everything seems to go back to normal, except Altum appears on the tv screens at school fairly often, and they’re taught all sorts about odds and sponsor gifts. When they send Altum and Roach a full fish dinner to share Ray is taught the actual price of that, and apparently it was more than his parents spent to send him to the school for a whole year. Ray honestly can’t tell if that’s a sign that the school or the meal was severely overpriced.

Altum and Roach find themselves in trouble from time to time, but they seem to handle it well. Altum falls out of one of the trees, managing to catch herself but severely winding herself, and Roach finds himself having to fight and kill the boy from 6 when he catches the boy trying to steal from them. Throwing fellow tributes out of the trees to their deaths proves to be a popular method of killing this year.

At home, Shad says he hasn’t seen Candiru since the start of the Games, but Mom goes fishing every morning to make sure she has fish to eat, and Aki asks them to deliver another load of foraged food to the Bowlines to keep them fed. They never see any of Altum’s family, but Ray certainly hears them crying when they pass by the house. Mom says not to mention it to anyone, though.

On the sixth day, it happens.

Altum and Roach are sharing a meal early in the morning, one sent by their sponsors, when the cracking of wood nearby alerts them both that someone is near, and barely a second later the whole Career Pack, consisting of both tributes from District 1, the girl from 2, the male tribute from 11 and the boy from 12, come crashing through the trees after them. Altum and Roach rush away, navigating through the trees as quickly as they can, but they’re not the only ones running, as the girl from 11 is caught in the chase too. She’s fast among the trees, but so is Altum and Roach, and the girl from 11 quickly changes plan, grabbing Altum’s foot and trying to slow her down instead, to be caught by the Career Pack instead of her.

Altum doesn’t scream, doesn’t panic, just kicks the girl in her face, trying once again to make a break for it, but the girl from 11 doesn’t relent, throwing her whole body at Altum, knocking her out of the tree entirely. She falls for what seems like an eternity, reaching out for anything that could slow her fall, only to land back first onto one of the spikes, which pierced through her chest in a spray of blood. Altum struggles for only a few moments before stilling, her cannon firing soon after. Roach screams at the sight, but doesn’t stop, not until the pack find another, slower tribute to catch and kill instead.

Ray was at school at the time, thankfully near to the toilets, and is gratefully sent home early once more when his breakfast and lunch greets him in the porcelain bowl. They don’t talk much at home that night; it was quite difficult to hear each other speak when the whole neighbourhood was drowned out by the screaming grief of Candiru’s family.

He doesn’t want to go back to school the next day: everyone else at school just seemed to be upset by the inconvenience that they were down to just one tribute, rather than upset that Altum was dead, and for once his parents agree that he can skip school, at least for the rest of the school week. Roach actually does well, even with Altum gone. He doesn’t climb as fast as she can, but he’s resourceful and handy. He manages to trade a hand made spear to the girl from 12 in exchange for some of the food she foraged, but neither stay in an alliance, and the weapon ultimately does the girl no good as she’s killed by her district partner barely three hours after the exchange. He in turn gets killed by the girl from 2 shortly after.

Roach is still alive when Ray goes back to the school the next week, and no-one makes mention of his absence. Jonah sticks to his elbow all the time, and whenever anyone around them so much as makes reference to Altum, Jonah tells them to shut up. Ray’s glad for it, and when he thanks Jonah for his help, he seems to glow with pride.

Roach makes it into the top ten, when he once again encounters the Career pack, who surround him on all sides, a high speed chase through the tree tops breaking out. He trips the girl from 2 to her death before the boy from one gets him trapped on one of the bridges, too close for Roach to try and climb free. The boy from 11 chases Roach down with a sword, dealing a deadly blow to his throat, but Roach gets the last laugh, smashing the boy’s leg with his hammer hard enough to break his femur, and once again District 4 is left without a Victor, and the boy from District 11 is left unable to stand, screaming out in pain. His District partner finds him, the career pack closing in to kill them both. She stands visibly torn between running and helping, and instead takes a third option, using her knife to cut her district partner’s throat that he didn’t have to suffer. And just like that the Arena is down to six tributes remaining.

With Roach gone, most of the buzz at school dies down too, and no-one mentions Altum again. Zabra took a week off school after Roach’s death, just like Ray did, and by the time she returns, the Games are over, and Summer is just about to begin. The girl from 11 emerges as the Victor, after the District 1 tributes try to take her out in the finale together, only to find themselves having to race after her, up the tallest tree in the whole Arena. They can’t climb fast, or well. The girl from 1 falls out of the tree, and the girl from 11, Seeder, Ray thinks they call her, smacks the boy with a spear over and over as he gets near until he too loses his grip and plummets to his death. And just like that, there’s back to back non-career tributes winning consecutive games, and everyone back home complains that they’ll likely not have volunteers again next year at this rate, which makes Ray shudder with fear.

Next year he’s in the Reaping. As is Shad, and all their friends. And if there’s no volunteers…

...Then they very well could find themselves in the Arena…

Chapter Text

The last day of school, Ray manages to get dragged to town by Jonah and Zabra, Keeli tagging along behind them, with Jonah declaring that it had been too sad of an end of the school year to leave it like that, and taking all four of them to-

“The ice cream parlour?” Ray asked in disbelief. Back home, ice cream was something the tourists ate, not locals, and Ray was completely unsure what to even make of the cold shop they walked in to, Jonah’s face alight with glee.

“Yeah! You can’t have a celebration without ice cream!” Jonah insisted, dragging Ray over to the display with all the different flavours in a wide variety of colours. “Hi, Miss Figurehead! I said I was gonna bring my friends today, and I did!”

The ice cream seller, Miss Figurehead, smiled brightly at Jonah as he neared. “Afternoon Jonah, so this is why you asked how much it would cost to get four ice creams, is it?”

“Yeah! Can we get four small cones please, a marshmallow flavour for me, what do you lot want?” Jonah asked, turning to the rest of them. “I’m buying them all with my pocket money.”

“Vanilla please, Miss Figurehead,” Zabra asked without missing a beat, while Keeli and Ray shifted uncomfortably where they stood as Jonah was handed his ice cream first.

“What’s your favourite flavours?” He asked, licking around the base of the cone. Ray glanced over to Keeli, who bit her lip.

“Um, I don’t know. I haven’t had ice cream before,” Keeli said, looking through the display. “Oooh, chocolate!”

“Would you like a little taste?” Miss Figurehead asked, handing Keeli a small spoon with a little bit of ice cream on it, which Keeli gladly took, licking it with a big smile.

“That’s lovely!” Keeli cried, “Jonah, can I have one of that, please?”

“Of course! Ray, what are you getting?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” Ray said quietly, shifting where he stood. Jonah paused.

“No, don’t be polite, Ray. I’m buying, what are you eating?”

“Nothing, Jonah, I don’t like sweets, remember?” Ray insisted, turning to the saleswoman. “Sorry Miss Figurehead, but I don’t have a sweet tooth. I don’t like sugar.”

“Ray,” Jonah insisted, shaking his head. “Come on, you haven’t even tried it, you might like it.”

“I said no, Jonah,” Ray said more harshly, which made Jonah jump, before Ray took a deep breath. “Doesn’t feel right celebrating, its Altum’s funeral tomorrow.”

Mags and Jib had brought her and Roach home yesterday, although Ray had been at school and couldn’t go see them returning. Shad said Candiru’s family didn’t stop crying, and Dad and Mom had stepped in to help carry the coffin back to the dockyards, since Candiru’s father could barely walk, never mind carry a coffin all the way from the train station to their home. They’d met up with Candiru and Stone when Ray returned home from school and gone to the beach to collect shells; Mom said the box the Capitol sent tributes home in was theirs to keep, so they didn’t really need to find stones and shells to weigh Altum down with, but tradition was tradition, and Candiru couldn’t go collecting on her own. They hadn’t said a word between them the whole three hours they’d scoured the beach, but at least they’d found some pretty stones for Altum, ones she would have liked.

“That’s tomorrow Ray, and today is today. Can’t we celebrate the end of the school year today?” Jonah insisted, to which Ray frowned.

“You lot celebrate as much as you want, but I don’t even want an ice cream.”

“Come on Ray, don’t be a stick in the mud. Just get him a vanilla, Miss Figurehead,” Jonah insisted. Despite his protests, the ice cream was placed into Ray’s hand, and he tried to enjoy it, he really did, but it was way too sweet and way too cold and didn’t sit right in his stomach with the thought of what was going to happen tomorrow. He ended up giving most of it to Keeli, who seemed to really enjoy the ice cream, and was overjoyed that Ray gave her so much of his.

“Are you going to be free to play this Summer, Keeli?” Jonah asked, to which Keeli shrugged.

“Dunno. They like to keep us working, they say so its to pay for the food we eat. Could be worse, though. Miss Sennit said she likes having me around the shop, said she might even start to train me to make new stuff to sell, so probably not. Some of the girls get sent down the dockyard to cut the fish instead, and that’s really stinky, they come back smelling of fish guts every night.”

“Are you working on your dad’s boat this summer, Ray?” Jonah asked.

“Not my dad’s boat,” Ray reminded him. “It’s Nangra’s boat, Dad just works on it. And I don’t know, I’ve only been out on it twice so far this year, and Shad’s so much better than me, the rest of the crew prefer having him over me.”

“Which one’s Nangra again?” Jonah asked, his face screwing up, trying to remember.

“Dad’s best friend. He’s really big, really strong, really dark skinned. You can’t miss him or his son Danio in a crowd.”

“His wife’s really nice, I remember that,” Keeli said between licks of her ice cream. “Danio’s wife, that is. I remember Nangra’s wife is really stern and a bit scary.”

“She’s dead,” Ray shrugged. “Died same year he bought his boat. Danio says she was never actually as scary as she looked though. Didn’t your Dad say your family owns a boat too, Jonah? Do you ever go out on it?”

“Most people own a boat, Ray,” Jonah started, to which Ray snorted.

“Most townpeople own a boat, you mean. Only the rich or the really lucky own a boat,” Ray corrected him.

“They don’t want us on the boat. Dad goes out on it once a year to make sure everything’s being run as it should be, said he’ll take me out on it when I’m older to show me what to look for, but the thought scares me a little. All the fishermen and fisherwomen are… kind of scary,” Jonah admitted, to which Ray snorted.

“We’re not that scary, none of my neighbours bar me from their house and accuse me of wanting to steal their food any time I pop ‘round to ask my friends to play,” Ray pointed out. “The townsfolk are the scary ones. Everyone down the docks is normal.”

“That’s just because you grew up down the docks, everyone else is scared of them,” Jonah insisted.

“Right, yeah, but we’re all scared of the townspeople for the same reason. Keeli’s not scared of my neighbours, are you?”

“Of course not,” Keeli agreed between mouthfuls of ice cream, “They’re all too nice. Nicer than the townsfolk.”

“They’re nice to you two because you two are locals, they’re not nice to town kids,” Jonah insisted.

“How would you know? You’ve never been down to the docks,” Ray scoffed, to which Jonah bit his lip.

“Mommy says-”

“Your mom also reckons I only go over to play with you to eat your sweets, let’s not put a lot of weight in what she says, shall we?” Ray reminded him.

They spent an hour in the ice cream shop before all heading home, their last ‘early finish’ of their school career. Next year and every year until they graduated, they would have to stay back an extra two hours, which meant Ray wouldn’t ever get home before half six at night. He’d have to spend nearly half the day travelling to or in school, which meant even less time to play with Shad, and Ray hated the thought.

When he opened the front door that evening, though, there was quite a new sight inside.

Shad was sat at the dining table, muttering ‘ow ow ow’ over and over again, while Mom washed his face, muttering something to him quietly. Ray closed the door a little too loudly, and Mom stood up, glancing over to him with a smile.

“Did you have fun with your friends, Ray?” She asked, to which Ray shrugged.

“Yeah, I guess. Don’t waste your money on ice cream, Shad, its too sweet. What happened?”

Shad had a large bruise over his right cheek, his eye swollen up already, and he winced as he tried to cover it from Ray’s sight. “Got into a fight,” Shad admitted quietly.

“How bad did they get injured?” Ray asked, to which Mom frowned. “What?”

“Didn’t fight back,” Shad shrugged, to which Ray’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t like fighting, Ray. And- and it was Candiru. It wouldn’t be right to hit her, not right now.”

“What’s Candiru doing punching you hard enough to give you a black eye?!” Ray demanded. Shad muttered something under his breath and Mom bit her lip, but neither said anything clear. “What?”

“Candiru was… upset, you know, because of her sister. So Stone and I took her out for a walk, to clear her head. And she started going on about how someone should have volunteered in Altum’s place, that it wasn’t fair, and we agreed with all that, but…”

“But?” Ray prompted, and Shad winced.

“She started going on about how someone from your school should have volunteered, she said that it was stupid, that surely the only reason its fair at all that the kids at your school get so much better teaching is because they have to die in the Arena rather than us. And I said I don’t want you to go into the Arena either, just because you go to your stupid school, and Candiru started getting all mad, saying at least you could fight, you’d stand a better chance, and- and- I told her to fuck off,” Shad said. “And then she got really mad and punched me, and Stone took her home ‘cos she was crying, and I had to walk home alone.”

Mom bit her lip, turning away back to the kitchen as Ray pulled up the seat next to Shad, pulling him into a hug. “I don’t wanna go into the Arena either, Shad. And I don’t want you in it, too. Thank you for sticking up for me.”

“You’re my brother, Ray, I’ll always stick up for you,” Shad assured him, tightening the hug. “But I feel really bad, I really upset Candiru, but she shouldn’t have said all of that.”

“No, she shouldn’t have,” Mom agreed. “Give her some time, Shad. People in grief don’t act rationally. I doubt she really wanted Ray to go into the Games either.”

When morning comes the next day, they get dressed in their nicest clothes and head towards Candiru’s house, alongside nearly all of their neighbours. Ray and Shad stood with Stone somewhere near the front door, with Candiru’s uncle stood behind them. They can still hear the crying of her family through the thin walls, and they wait patiently for a few minutes before Altum’s friends make their way to the front door, knocking on it, letting themselves in. Then they wait in silence for another few minutes, the crowd getting gradually tense.

“What’s going on?” Shad whispered to Ray, who shrugged.

“Barra wants to carry Altum,” Candiru’s uncle, Pollock, leant forward to whisper to them, “But I don’t think he can.”

The front door opened, with Candiru and one of Altum’s friends stepping out first, helping to pull the wooden coffin through the open door as the crowd kept a respectful silence, heads bowed. Candiru glanced in their direction for a moment, just long enough for Ray to wave at her, before she turned away again, her tear stained face still red, while more people exited through the front door, Pollock stepping forward to help grab hold of the coffin and keep it steady as people tried to manouvere out of the door.

“I can do it!” Candiru’s father’s voice carried through the door as he lurched after the coffin, trying to grab it, his mutilated leg twisting and giving way beneath him as the crowd stepped forward to try and catch him. “Let go of me! I can do it! I’ll carry her, please!”

Pollock had stepped back, ushering Shad and Ray to step back too, trying to help his brother-in-law to his feet. “No! Get off of me!” Barra demanded, shoving Pollock away as Altum’s family and friends carried the coffin towards the docks. “I’ll carry her, please, please, let me carry her! I have to, I have to-”

Barra’s voice broke as he desperately tried to keep up with the procession, moving so much slower than Ray had ever seen a funeral procession go. Pollock had kept a hold of him, trying to help him along as Barra continued to cry.

“I introduced her to the sea! Let me take her back to it, please! Please!”

Barra finally caught up, finally placed his hands upon the wooden coffin, but even with Pollock’s help he couldn’t help lift it, couldn’t do anything but place his hands upon the wood and scream with his grief, while the crowd slowly followed, slowly guiding Altum back to the ocean. Somewhere from within the crowd, Ray could hear Danio’s voice start a song.

“Oh, I bid farewell to the port and the land

And I paddle away from brave Panem’s white sands

To search for my long ago forgotten friends

To search for the place I hear all sailor’s end

It did nothing for Barra’s grief, but one by one the crowd took up the tune, those that knew the words singing, those that didn’t hummed along. They sang it at every funeral in the docks, a song about grief, a song about loss, a song about meeting together once again in the sea. The final resting place of all in District 4; Mom said once that they all came from the water, once, and the water gave them life every day they lived, and in the end, they’d return to the water once more. All together, once more and forever.

Little by little, the crowd stops following. The strangers first, followed shortly by distant acquaintances. One by one they peter out, with Ray, Shad and Stone stopping some distance away from the boat that would take Altum out on her final voyage. Only close friends and close family got to go near the boat, got to board it to take her out to sea one last time. The song continued, even as the boat pulled away.

Out in the deep ocean, they would lower the coffin into the water, far from any fishing spots, far from any beaches, as far out as they could get before they got in trouble with the Capitol. Ray and Shad hadn’t travelled out that far ever: their grandparents were long dead before they were born, Mom didn’t speak to her brother, and Dad’s older siblings had died young, without children. There was no-one to bury at sea for them, but the idea of being allowed to travel so far out was marred by the knowledge of the misery the funerals always brought.

It was a muted day back home. They didn’t play much, just cleaned and tidied their house while Mom and a few other neighbours went to the Bowline’s house to clean it for them. It felt like they were just waiting for the day to end, so tomorrow could start and they could be happy again without feeling guilty for it.

Dad returned home before Mom did, setting his fishing tackle down behind the door, a sizable fish in his hands. Him and Nangra still went fishing with their rods often; neither of them could spear fish like Mom could, so angling was the best they could do to get some extra fish.

“Nangra’s setting off to sea again tomorrow. Are you coming again, Shad?” Dad asked brightly, Shad’s face brightening at the request, before he noticed Ray’s look, and paused.

“Shouldn’t you take Ray instead?” Shad asked. “I mean, Nangra always says Ray needs more practice, and you won’t take Ray out of school to go fishing, but you will take me, so surely you need to take him out on the boat in Summer?”

“Ah, well,” Dad paused, seeming to try and search for a reason. “Boat’s been out of use for a while, we need all hands on deck to get a good catch in to make up for lost time from the Games, so Nangra wants his best crewmates on board. I’ll take Ray out the next time the boat goes out.”

“You said that last year, too,” Shad reminded him, “But you said the second boat was going to return too close to the start of school and if we got caught in a storm then Ray would miss a day of school so he couldn’t go on the second trip, either.”

“Well, it was the same deal last year. Nangra wants all his best crew on the first boat, and there’s no point paying for Ray to go to school if he’s not there.”

“But it’s not fair,” Ray insisted. “Shad’s really good because he’s always out at sea, and I’m not because you never take me!”

“That’s not true,” Dad insisted. “I take you out all the time.”

“No, you don’t! We kept count, since the start of last summer you took Shad out twenty times, and me only two times! And you always take Shad out on longer voyages, too!”

Dad huffed loudly, crossing his arms. “Well, no matter what we did last year, Nangra needs his best men, and that means Shad. I can’t take you, Ray.”

“Then you’re not taking me, either,” Shad insisted, stamping his foot. “Find a different cabin boy, I won’t go.”

“Don’t be stupid, Shad. You love being at sea, don’t cut your nose off to spite your face,” Dad scolded, but Shad’s jaw was set firm as he grabbed Ray’s arm.

“You’re not teaching Ray and that’s not fair, and I won’t let you be unfair to Ray!” Shad insisted.

“It’s Nangra’s order, not mine. You still need training too, Shad-” Dad tried to argue, but at Nangra’s name, Shad turned tail and walked towards the front door. “Shad, get back here!”

But Shad didn’t return, and Ray took off after him, making their way through the rows of wooden houses to Nangra’s house. It was hard to miss: Aki grew all sorts of flowers in pots she kept just outside the front door, and currently Danio was up on the roof trying to fix some holes while Tali sat beside him, holding nails.

“Danio!” Shad yelled up to him, and Danio turned to him with a smile.

“Afternoon, kiddo!” He greeted with a wave. “Cor, that’s one impressive shiner you’ve got there!”

“Where’s your dad?” Shad asked, to which Danio frowned.

“Should be in the house, why? What’s up?”

Dad had caught up with them, grabbing Shad’s arm. “Shad, come on, we don’t take disagreements to the streets. We’ll talk about this at home.”

“No,” Shad insisted, stamping his foot. “You said Nangra’s keeping Ray off the boat, so I’m gonna be mad at him too! This way I only need to yell once!”

“Pa’s doing what?” Danio asked, putting down his hammer and wrapping his arms around Tali to keep him secure as he scooted back towards the ladder. The front door opened as Nangra stepped out, and Dad bit his lip, looking sincerely like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “Pa, what have you been telling Wobbe?”

“What?” Nangra asked with a frown, glancing between the crowd that had accumulated in front of his house, Shad livid and bruised, Ray dragged along, Danio looking confused, Dad seeming to want to melt into the floor beneath him, and little Tali clutching to his dad to avoid having to look at anyone. “What is going on out here?”

“Dad says I have to go on your boat tomorrow to help pull the catch in, and you only want me, not Ray, even though Ray needs more practice and its not fair to always take me out on the boat and not him. Ray’s good, he’s just not fast, and he’d be as good as me if you just let him on the boat more!”

Nangra frowned, looking towards Wobbe, “I told your father that we were leaving on schedule tomorrow, and that I’d appreciate having a cabin boy on board if one of you two wanted to come along now that the Games are over and school is finished for the Summer. In fact, I specifically suggested taking Ray because he needs more practice, I did not say it had to be Shad.”

“Dad said you needed your best men, and that was me.”

“I always take my best men,” Nangra insisted. “Wouldn’t let anyone on board I didn’t trust wholly. But I don’t expect my cabin boys or apprentices to be up to their standard, you boys are still learning. If something was so dire I needed a specific skill set, I’d take a younker instead. I would never specify taking Shad out over Ray, that’s not fair on either of you.”

Shad crossed his arms, turning back to Dad with a stern look, which Ray took up with him. Dad bit his lip, seeming to flounder under the scrutiny.

“You know, Wobbe, if you’re going to upset your boys, at least do it under your own name, don’t go dragging us into this to save face,” Danio insisted.

“Why won’t you take me on the boat?” Ray demanded. Dad sighed loudly, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Ray, for crying out loud, you don’t need to go on the damned boat!” Dad declared. “Your mother and I are spending ridiculous amounts of money sending you to that school so you can lead a better life than us, get a better job than being a fisherman! Shad doesn’t have that opportunity, he’s not going to get a better job than me, so he has to go on the boat to learn the trade!”

“I don’t want a better job!” Ray insisted. “I want to be a fisherman, like you!”

“You’d be wasting your education-”

“I didn’t want to go to that stinking school!” Ray insisted. “I wanted to keep going to school with Shad, you’re the one who made me go! You’re the one who wants me to be something I’m not! You’re the one who won’t let me become a fisherman!”

“You’re going to that school whether you like it or not. You’re going to get a better life, a better job, whether you want to or not-”

“And just let Shad have a terrible life instead?” Ray asked. “Because that’s what you’re saying. Shad gets to learn to be a fisherman so he gets underpaid and overworked the rest of his life, and I don’t get to learn so I can be overpaid and underworked instead? How is that fair?”

“Life isn’t fair!” Dad snapped. “But making sure Shad has the skills to work to feed his family one day is more important than making sure you have those skills because graduating from the Academy will lead you to better paid jobs. Life isn’t fair, but sacrificing Shad’s training for your feelings is just as unfair.”

Ray stared back at him, his mouth agape, trying desperately to think up of something to yell back, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Just like in interview practice when everyone was staring at him, words were failing him, and now the whole street was staring at the commotion. Ray swallowed.

“Fine, take him. If you love him so much more, take him and leave me again!” Ray offered, feeling his eyes well up with tears, to which Dad’s face fell.

“Ray, that’s not-”

But he didn’t wait around to hear the rest, running as fast and as far as his legs could take him, before his mind caught up and wondered where he was going, stopping only once he reached the beach, flouncing down into the sand, hugging his knees to his face. Dad didn’t want him to be a fisherman. Dad wasn’t taking him out to sea because he wanted Shad to follow in his footsteps and not him. Shad would follow on family tradition, not him…

He wasn’t sure how long he was sat there, but a hand reached between his arm and his leg, looping the attached arm around his as someone sat down beside him, pulling him into a hug. Ray didn’t even need to look to know who it was; he knew his breathing, his heart beat, his presence like he knew his own.

“It’s not fair,” Ray whispered, glancing up at Shad, who nodded.

“Dad and Nangra got to grow up and work the same boat together, why can’t we? Johnny said they like to hire friends to work the same boat, and we’re more than just friends. We’d make the best pair.”

“I don’t wanna work somewhere you’re not,” Ray continued. “I don’t want to be away from you.”

“Or me from you,” Shad agreed. “But I’m starting to get the feeling no-one’s gonna let us stick together.”

They spent the rest of the day on the beach, playing in the sand together, barely speaking. When time came to head home, neither of them did, just continued to play on the beach. Even when Mom saw them as she headed home, all bright smiles and laughter, suggesting they walk home with her, they refused, standing their ground until she left to go ask Dad what was wrong. Only then did he make a reappearance, sitting in the sand with them, neither of them meeting his eyes.

“I love both of you equally,” he started. “Let’s get that straight. And if we could afford to send you both to the Academy, I’d do it in a heart beat. But we can’t. So this is the best we can do. I want a better life for both of you than I have had, and I mean that as sincerely as I can. So Ray goes to the Academy and gets a better paid job with his connections and schooling, and Shad comes on the boats as often as I can get him on, so I can train him well and quick, that he might become a skipper at a young age, get paid better than anyone else on the boats do. I only want the best for both of you.”

“So why lie and tell us Nangra was forbidding Ray from the boat?” Shad asked. Dad sagged.

“Look, my own father was… complicated. We had a complicated relationship. I was the youngest of six and I was the only one to make it to twenty five alive, it weighed heavily on my father, your grandfather. I don’t want to have that kind of relationship with either of you. I don’t want to have shouting matches in the street with you, and I don’t want either of you to think I’m favouring one over the other. I’m not. I’m just… trying to balance what we have so you both get the best chance in life. Ray gets the money investment, and Shad gets the time investment. It’s not perfect, but… its the best I can do.”

They still didn’t look at him, even as Dad stood to his feet, putting his hands in his pockets. “Tea’s ready. It’s been a long, sad day. Let’s go home and get something to eat and sleep on it tonight, alright? We’ll discuss this again in the morning, if you want.”

They didn’t talk much at tea, any of them. Didn’t feel right, especially when they could still hear Candiru’s family sobbing a few doors away, and by the time they’d gone to bed, Ray was sure he hadn’t said anything at all in hours. In the morning, Dad wakes them both up early, asks if either of them wanted to come on Nangra’s boat, and Ray volunteers Shad, because as much as Ray hates to admit it, Dad has a point. If he had hopes of getting a different job and Shad only had the hope of being a fisherman, then it was mean for him to take away Shad’s opportunity to learn just so he wouldn’t feel bad. Shad tries to voice his protests, but Ray just smiles at him and tells him to enjoy the trip, before bursting into tears as soon as Dad and Shad leave. And for the first time in his life, he turns down Mom’s attempts to comfort him, retreating to his and Shad’s bed to cry alone instead.

Chapter Text

That summer Ray spent as much time as he could away from home, even risking going far in land to meet up with Zabra, dragging along Jonah when he could. Zabra’s family, unlike her, were actually really nice. Zabra’s parents didn’t accuse Ray of trying to steal from them, and even let Ray and Jonah sleep over a few times in the summer since they’d travelled so far to play with her. But Keeli wasn’t allowed to come play, which made Ray feel guilty about leaving her out, so instead he made a mental list of every day she wasn’t working so he could go play with her instead.

Zabra’s dad didn’t just make boats, he owned the whole business that made them, and he even showed Ray around it when Zabra mentioned that Ray worked the boats from time to time. Her family specialised in the big boats with fancy sails, the really big ones that the tourists went out on, but they had a few smaller, fishing vessels, too. Zabra’s dad talked a lot of really technical terms that Ray didn’t recognise, but when Ray mentioned the boat his Dad worked, Zabra’s dad seemed to recognise it.

“The Salty Cairn?” He asked. “Isn’t that owned by the Mayor?”

“No, it’s owned by Danio and his dad, Nangra,” Ray corrected him. “They’re not mayors, they live down the docks with us.”

“How’d a couple of fishermen manage to buy a boat?” He pushed, but Ray just shrugged.

“Nangra says they saved a lot of money over a lot of years and bought it that way.”

Dad had an entirely different theory, as did many people down the docks, but you weren’t meant to say them out loud, and you definitely weren’t meant to say them to Nangra. Some people reckoned Nangra had killed his wife for the money, somehow, but Dad had quietly told Ray he always assumed the boat had been a bribe to force Nangra to keep his mouth shut about who had actually killed her. Either way, the boat kept them fed, and kept a good few neighbour’s families fed too, so no-one was complaining about how Nangra and Danio managed to get their hands on their own boat, and no-one questioned it either. Like fish that was illegally caught that you ate for tea: who cared what you had to do to get it, if it kept you fed, you didn’t mention the source of it.

When three weeks pass and Shad and Dad finally return home, Shad practically bounds up to Ray, pulling him into a hug as greeting. “I missed you Ray, did you have fun with your friends while I was away at least?”

“I got to see Zabra’s dad make a boat, and Jonah let me ride his bike again. I’m actually getting good at it, now,” Ray explained, to which Shad smiled.

“That’s cool! I’ve got some cool news too: Nangra and Danio want to promote me to an apprentice, rather than a cabin boy! Danio says it’s ‘well overdue’ but I don’t know what he means by that.”

“An apprentice!” Ray said with a smile. “That’s super cool, Shad. You’re gonna be a real fisherman soon.”

Ray’s chest hurt at the thought, but he didn’t want to say that out loud. Instead Shad continued, “Nangra and Danio said I’ve gotta prove I know all the right stuff to become an apprentice so they’re gonna test me tomorrow. They said you can come along too, if you want. The whole crew have to watch me, Danio said its to put the same pressure on me as if we were actually at sea.”

“What happens if you do become an apprentice?” Ray asked, to which Shad shrugged.

“Dunno! Think I get extra responsibilities and I outrank the other cabin boys, although that’s just you and we’re never on the boat together, so I don’t think much will change,” Shad explained. “But Dad says I’ve got to be an apprentice before I can become a younker and eventually a full crewmate so it means I’m getting more mature.”

“And I’ll still be a cabin boy,” Ray muttered. And Dad only wanted to take Shad out to sea, not him, meaning he’d remain a cabin boy forever. Shad frowned.

“No way. If I become an apprentice and outrank you, I’ll start teaching you what you need to pass the test and then you can become an apprentice too. I’m not gonna outrank you. No Shad without Ray, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ray agreed, but it didn’t have the same excitement to it as Shad had.

The test seemed to consist of the entire crew standing on the boat watching Shad as Nangra listed off a random assortment of skills and knowledge he wanted Shad to demonstrate, and then Shad had to do them in front of everyone. It’s the first time Ray actually watches Shad working on the boat, since they’re never allowed on together, and after watching him, Ray suddenly understands why Nangra teases him about his skills so much. Shad’s a whirlwind of speed, yet he never makes a single mistake. The same knot that takes Ray five minutes and three tries to get right, Shad’s got it down perfectly in under a minute. He identifies all sorts of fish species by name and purpose in the catch with barely any thinking time. Nangra gives him a task, Danio poses him a question, and Shad doesn’t even pause in his working, shouting out the answer as he goes about as Nangra asks.

The faces on the crew are so different too. When Ray works, they seem to barely be holding back laughter when he struggles with the basics, but with Shad, they smile and they give him thumbs up when they think he’s looking, even though Ray can see Shad’s so absorbed in his work he’s not actually looking at anything but what he’s working with. And then after half an hour has passed, they start an applause for Shad.

“Come here, Shad,” Nangra instructed, to which Shad did. Stood toe to toe like that, Nangra looks all the taller, all the more intimidating, especially when he was pulling such a serious face as he was right now, his hooded eyes making it hard to see what he was actually feeling. “All those crew in favour of promoting our cabin boy to apprentice, say ‘aye’.”

A chorus of ‘aye’ rings around the boat, before Nangra continues. “All those against, say ‘nay’.”

It’s so quiet, Ray can hear the lapping of waves against the side of the boat, and Ray knows the only person who could watch that display and not think Shad deserved to be promoted had to be someone selfish and jealous of his brother’s skills. Someone who shouldn’t get a say either way. After a moment or two of silence, Nangra’s eyebrows raise up into his signature smile, as he holds out his hand to Shad, which Shad takes. “Welcome aboard, apprentice.”

The crew cheers for him, with Nangra giving Shad a salute, which Shad echoes back, before Dad steps forward to pull Shad into a hug, their smiles spread wide across their faces, the crew closing in to congratulate Shad, and all Ray can do is slowly, quietly, sneak off the ship before his emotions get the better of him and he starts crying again.

He doesn’t really remember the walk so much as he remembers finding himself outside Jonah’s house, walking down the street, glancing up at Jonah’s window until Jonah notices him and rushes out of sight, meeting Ray down one of the side alleys, a bright smile across his face which fades as he approaches Ray.

“Ray? What’s the matter?” Jonah asked, and Ray felt his lip quiver.

“How do you deal with knowing your parents have a favourite child, and its not even you?” Ray asked, before the dam bursts and before Ray knows it, he’s crying into Jonah’s shirt, while Jonah hugs him, tries to guide him to sit down on one of the nearby benches, rubbing his back until he calms down enough to talk about it. He finally explains everything that had happened over the summer, about Dad not wanting to train him to be a fisherman, about Shad needing the training more, all culminating in the crew, their supposed shared crew, cheering on Shad like they did each other where the only ever seemed to tease him. Jonah’s a good listener. He doesn’t even know most of the names Ray lists off to him, but he doesn’t complain, doesn’t interrupt, only waits until Ray’s done talking before he speaks again.

“That sucks, Ray,” he muttered quietly. “Mommy and Daddy might prefer Ariel to me, but they still teach me to make jewellry. I thought your parents were nicer than mine.”

“They are,” Ray insisted. “I just don’t understand why they’re telling me I can’t be a fisherman!”

“Maybe they just want you to have a nicer life, you know. Like mine. With sweets and bikes and cake for your birthday,” Jonah offered, while Ray rubbed his nose on the back of his hand.

“But I don’t want that,” he insisted. “I don’t want to live in the town or in-land or anywhere that’s far from Shad. I don’t like sweets and I love eating fish, why can’t they just let me be happy?”

Jonah was quiet for a moment, thinking it over, before softly saying, “Maybe they just want you and Shad to be a bit more independent of each other. You can’t always be together, you know, even if you want to be.”

“We’re not always together,” Ray insisted. “I’ve got different friends to him, don’t I?”

“Yeah, but when you hang out with us, it feels more like you’re just killing time until you can play with Shad again, rather than actually playing with us.”

It’s such an awful thing to say, but Ray can barely even begin to deny it, because it was true, wasn’t it? Jonah, Keeli and Zabra were his friends from school, but Shad was Shad, and he rarely stayed out after school to play with them or walk home with them because he wanted to get back to play with Shad. Whenever Shad was on land Ray spent the summer fishing and playing with him, ignoring the rest of his friends until he went off to sea again, when he’d go play with them only until Shad came home.

Before Ray could even answer, he could hear his name being yelled from down the street, his father’s voice carrying through the stone town, panic evident in his tone. Jonah squeezed Ray’s hand but pushed him to stand with him as they made their way towards the voice, until Dad came into view, relief flushing across his face at the sight of Ray.

“Oh, Ray!” He yelled, rushing over and wrapping his arms around him. “Don’t run off like that, you had us all so worried! Half the neighbourhood’s been out looking for you, Danio even started looking in the waters under his boat in case you fell in!”

“Sorry, Dad,” Ray answered, feeling his breath hitch again, Dad hugging him tighter for a moment before letting go, running his hand down Ray’s hair.

“I know things are a bit complicated at the moment, but please don’t go running off without telling us where you’re going. Even just one of the neighbours if you’re upset with me. You had me so scared.”

“Complicated is one word for it,” Jonah muttered under his breath, loud enough for Ray to hear, but not Dad.

“Come on, lets go home, call off the search party,” Dad insisted. “Shad’s worried sick for you.”

Ray doesn’t want to go home. For once in his life, the thought of returning to his neighbourhood, for everyone to look at him knowing he ran away because he was jealous of Shad, makes him feel sick, and he wants to stay here with Jonah instead, but he wants to admit that he doesn’t want to go home even less. So he just nods, letting Dad take his hand and walk him home.

All the neighbours they pass greet him with relieved smiles, and the news that he was found must travel fast, because Shad greets him long before they get home with a massive hug and an assertion of how worried he was, too, begging Ray to not leave him like that again, and all Ray can think about is what Jonah said about them being too dependant on each other, and Ray wishes with all his might he can forget about it, but Shad is so clingy that night, it’s hard to stop the sentence from circling around and around in his mind, over and over and over again.

He plays with Shad every day until Dad has to set off on the boat again, and once more, Ray is given first refusal. But with Shad now being an apprentice, he gets a small pay with every trip he does, and frankly, it makes more sense for Shad to go out to sea as an apprentice for the first time than for Nangra and Danio to continue having a cabin boy, so Ray tells Dad to take Shad again, and spends the rest of the summer playing with Jonah in the park by the town. By the time Shad returns and school starts again, he’s got riding the bike down to a tee.

School is very different that year.

The subjects get harder, the teachers more demanding, and training moves from a few times a week to daily. The last two hours of school, which they hadn’t had the year before, is dedicated to it. Three days a week they spar and fight with each other and the older kids or practice swimming in the pool. Two days a week they have interview practice or learn about some other aspect of the Games. By the time Ray gets home every night he’s exhausted, barely staying awake to eat, never mind to play with Shad at all, and he suggests Shad go play with Stone instead. Ray rarely stays awake long enough to see 9pm.

And then, there’s the Victors.

They’d usually only see them once or twice a year previously, but nearly once a week there’s a Victor in one of their lessons, teaching them what they know. Each one has some speciality that they focus on, a different weapon they each prefer, giving pointers to each kid that uses them. Xebec, Jib and Zander all know their tridents, each one gives Ray pointers on stance and wielding them, and while initially Ray feels too starstruck and self-conscious to do much more than mutter a thanks to them, after a while they just become teachers like any other. Zander jokes that he wields his trident like he’s fishing his opponent rather than fighting them, and Jib even spars with him at one point, something that makes Shad very jealous when he tells him, although Jib is so much bigger and stronger, Ray stands even less of a chance against him than he did Tiller. And sparring with the Victors is nothing like sparring against classmates: they don’t hold back, and they don’t play nice. They fight dirty, and fight to win. Most of the kids in class aren’t even allowed to spar with them since they’re so strong.

Mags doesn’t train combat. They’d watched her Games highlights in their entirety one day at school, watched her do everything she could to keep her district partner, a young boy, safe. But when one of the giants kills him mercilessly right in front of her, something seemed to snap and shatter in a way that made Ray squirm in his seat. Usually if a tribute snapped in the Arena, they became reckless, dangerous but easy to beat, so lost in their grief or madness their opponents just ran rings around them, but not Mags. Hers was the first Arena to be set not in a colloseum, but in a natural environment, and they watch her tear the Arena to shreds to make traps and weapons, luring tributes to their deaths or to such injury the other tributes kill them for her, gutting the rest like a fish without hesitancy or remorse, and when an ally crosses her, she cuts off her own hair to fashion a rope to strangle them with in their sleep. Her grief only makes her more dangerous, more determined. Ray knows she’s as dangerous as the rest of the Victors. Maybe more so, looking as harmless as she did.

But she doesn’t train combat. She takes more interest in the interviews, teaching lessons on conducting themselves on stage and even giving private interview practice. Its spread over a week, with everyone being called aside one by one, alphabetically by surname. Jonah is one of the first, and makes sure to assure Ray that its not as bad as it sounds, that Mags is really nice. Zabra and Keeli both have theirs on the middle day, and they report much the same. But Ray doesn’t get his chance until the last day of the week, where his teacher sends him out of sparring practice to go for interview practice, walking into one of the school’s nearly empty offices, coming face to face with Mags once more. She greets him with a smile.

“You must be Ray,” She said, summoning him further into the room, which he hesitantly does. “Don’t look quite so worried, I don’t bite.”

“Hi, Mrs Mags,” he greeted, shuffling his feet on the carpet, before stopping. “I’m not meant to do that in an interview, am I?”

“No,” she agreed, “But this isn’t an actual interview. This is just practice. Why don’t you come and sit with me?” He inched further into the room, cautiously taking up the chair beside Mags as she smiled at him. “We’re just having some practice in case you get reaped this year. I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, I’ll be there with you, going over all of this again. Lets practice some questions, okay?”

She’s a lot nicer than the teachers are, that’s for certain, and after a short while Ray finds himself relaxing, the answers come a lot easier. Mags gives him a few prompts, and even suggests he lies once or twice.

“They’re not going to know either way,” she assured him. “Like, for example, you said you were named after a manta ray, which is well and good, but a sting ray is a much more dangerous fish, makes you sound a lot stronger.”

“But I was named after the manta ray because they’re big, gentle and smart, and they’re just as pretty as a stingray,” Ray insisted, to which Mags chuckled.

“Oh, most certainly. But the audience will think a stingray is cooler.”

“Manta rays are better,” Ray insisted.

“Now, is that because they’re more impressive than a stingray, or just because you were named after them?” Mags prompted, which made Ray pause. Now that he thought about it…

Training with the older kids proves a little easier that year, although they occaisionally have sparring matches with the younger kids, too. They spar with the eighteen year olds a lot, Jonah says its in preparation for if they were reaped, just like everything else at the school, but they’re a little easier to fight than when he was ten. When they practice with the fifteen year olds, Ray finds himself sparring with Twait quite a lot, too. He prefers a spear over any other weapon, but he makes a joke about his real favourite weapon being a coffin hammer, which seems to upset Zabra, with Roach’s death still being so fresh in everyone’s mind. Twait is still struggling to catch up with his classmates, but that just means him and Ray are on roughly even footing, and the sparring matches they have end up being really fun.

Around January, Ray is showing Jonah, Keeli and Zabra how to play pitching pennies, but using pebbles instead, when a loud voice interrupts their game.

“HEY! Twait’s future brother-in-law!” Someone yells towards them, which makes all four of them pause, watching as Twait’s friend, another boy from the orphanage named Seine, waves them over while Twait blushes bright red.

“Seine, what the hell? Don’t call him that,” Twait instructed, while Seine just laughed.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Seine asked. Twait sighed loudly, shoving Seine away as he continued to laugh, turning instead to Ray.

“Hey kid, you’re from down the dockyards right? With your name and trident skills, gotta be a dockyard kid, right?”

“We’re not all named after fish,” Ray insisted.

“Oh yeah? Name one person who’s not, then,” Seine countered, which made Ray pause. Well, everyone in his family was, as was everyone in Nangra’s family, even if he didn’t know what fish Tali was named for and Aki wasn’t born with the name Akysis. Everyone in Candiru’s family and extended family was too, but… he must have been thinking too long as Seine bursts out into laughter again.

“Keeli’s not, she’s named after the keel of a ship,” Ray finally said, before adding, “And Johnny is named after a sea shanty. And- and there’s more, but I don’t know everyone. And! And! Twait’s named after a fish too. A type of shad, just like my brother.”

“Just teasing you kid, don’t take it so personally,” Seine joked while Ray pouted, Twait shoved him away.

“Fuck off Seine, I’m trying to ask for his help, don’t upset him. Your brother still spends most of his time down the dockyards, then? Is he trustworthy?”

“Absolutely,” Ray insisted. “He’s really sweet and friendly.”

“Good. Look, the orphanage, in all their endless wisdom and glory, have decided to force my little sister out of school. They say they need more money to keep us all fed, but my family had money and no-one will tell me what happened to that. I keep fighting it, but I’m fighting a losing battle, and they’re going to start sending her down to the dockyards to train as a fish cutter. But neither of us have ever been down the dockyards; she’s scared. As am I.”

“It’s not scary,” Ray insisted. “’Specially if she’s training with the fish cutters. They take care of each other, especially the older women, caring for the young girls. Most men who pass by the fish cutters are more scared of them than the other way around.”

“Good,” Twait nodded, relief crossing his face. “But she doesn’t know anyone from down the docks, I was hoping… maybe you could get your brother to go introduce himself, maybe yourself too, just so she knows someone else she can turn to if she’s having trouble? She can take care of herself, but… I worry, you know? She’s my baby sister, I want her to be safe.”

“Sure,” Ray nodded, and Twait smiled, visibly sagging with relief. “Tell her to look for two of me.”

“Two of you?”

“That’s what I said.”

Twait’s sister’s first shift as a fish cutter turned out to be that Saturday, so Ray told Shad about the plan in advance. They have a number of fish cutters starting that day, and Danio and Aki donate a few fish from their boat for the older cutters to teach the young girls to practice on, before the first ship pulls in and they’re swamped with fish, cutting and gutting them as fast as they can go. Ray tries not to stare, but they’re fascinating to watch work. Not so much the young girls, who go at a normal pace, but the experienced cutters can gut a fish and clean it in seconds. Mom told Ray once that they were all paid per fish, and barely pennies per fish too, so the quicker they go, the more money they earn. The guts are piled up seperately, with many of the cutters young children taking them to go crabbing off the side of the pier, which are collected and sold by the dockyard owners at the end of the day, paying them pennies per catch, too. Ray and Shad end up at the beach playing most of the day, waiting for Twait’s little sister to finish working, before heading off to find her.

She’s hard to miss, with her bronze hair, green eyes and golden skin, looking so much like Twait it was uncanny, but where before they’d always seen her in fine, pitch black clothes, she’s wearing rags, wiping her hands down the front of her apron as Betta congratulates her on a first day, a smile spreading across her tired face. Ray and Shad approach, and Betta catches sight of them first, smiling and waving them over.

“Ah, Wobbe’s twins!” She greeted them, while the girl turned around to look at them, her eyes widening at the sight. “Come and meet Allis, she’ll be your age.”

“Hi!” Ray greeted, waving at her as Shad did the same. “Twait asked me to come say hi, too.”

“My brother?” She confirmed, to which Ray nodded. “So, you must be Ray and Ray’s brother.”

“Shad,” Shad confirmed.

“Is… is there a way to tell you two apart?” she asked, to which Ray and Shad burst out laughing.

“We can tell each other apart easily. He’s Shad,” Ray pointed to Shad.

“And he’s Ray,” Shad pointed to Ray. “Telling us apart is everyone else’s problem, we can always tell ourselves apart.”

Allis gives them a smile, but there’s a little force behind it, so Ray continues regardless. “Twait asked if we could keep an eye out for you. Has anyone showed you around the dockyard? Where to go if you need help while you’re here?”

“No, but I should get the tram home soon, Twait will be worried,” Allis insisted.

“Next tram leaves in half an hour,” Ray reminded her. “Come on, we’ll show you where all the nice people live if you need someone to help you, and show you where we live too. And you can wash your hands a little better at our home too, the tram driver doesn’t like if you smell of fish on his tram.”

Allis umms and ahhs for a little while, before Betta gently pushes her towards them. “Wobbe’s twins are lovely boys, dear. Don’t you worry. If they cause you any issues, just tell me and I’ll tell their father to give them a right thrashing, alright?”

Allis still doesn’t seem convinced, but she does follow them as Ray and Shad lead her towards their house. “So, you go to school with Twait?”

“I do, Shad goes to the school near here. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us go to school together, says one of us has to study halfway across the District instead,” Ray explained, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t really want to work here either,” Allis moaned. “I’d rather be in school, but the orphanage says I need to stop scrounging and pull my weight.”

“But Twait goes to the Academy, why not just send him to a normal school and save the orphanage some money?” Shad asked.

“Someone else paid for him to go to that school, but no-one wants to pay for me to go, so I gotta work instead,” Allis explained. “Even though Twait hates school and I love it.”

“That’s not fair,” Shad agreed, stopping as they reached their house. “This is our house, we live here with our parents. There’s usually someone here, me more often than Ray though, so if you need any help just knock on our door. Our friend Stone lives across the street, his family’s nice too,” Shad pointed the house out, “And three doors up that way is Candiru’s house, but we don’t see her as much since her sister died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Allis said, and the sorrow looked very genuine, too. “Were they close?”

“Very,” Shad confirmed. “Umm, who else should we show you the house of…”

“Did Betta show you her house?” Ray asked, to which Allis shook her head. “We’ll show you that, too.”

They did, leading her to a squat little house a few streets over, where Pollock was stood outside his house, leaning against the door frame with his friend Steeve. They waved at them as they neared. “You must be one of the new cutters,” Pollock greeted Allis. “Betta said they’re training them up today.”

“This is Pollock,” Ray introduced them. “He’s the shortest man in the dockyards.”

“Hey, come on now, I’ve got other qualities,” Pollock argued.

“He’s got four daughters so he’s pretty nice to girls, but he tends to yell at us a bit,” Shad added.

“Kids, I’m right here, and I wouldn’t yell if you weren’t such assholes,” Pollock insisted, while Steeve burst out laughing. “Don’t laugh at me, I told you, these little assholes keep bullying me.”

“Oh no, Pollock, whatever will we do? You and your heated rivalry with two twelve year olds,” Steeve teased. “Besides, don’t swear in front of the girl, you were raised better than that.”

“Pollock’s married to Betta and Steeve’s married to Gobi, so if you need to find their wives, you can look for them and ask them where they are. They’re some of the least scary fishermen you can find,” Ray explained. “I mean, Steeve’s big but he’s scared of spiders, and Pollock’s shorter than you anyway.”

“Alright, now you’re doing this on purpose,” Steeve complained, grabbing Ray and dragging him closer, scruffing up Ray’s hair as Ray yelled out. “You watch your tongue or I’m telling your father!”

“Only if you can give him the right name,” Shad insisted as Ray broke free of Steeve’s grasp. “Go on, which one’s which?”

Steeve and Pollock visibly glanced between the two of them for a minute, before Steeve let out a resigned huff, stepping back towards the wall of Pollock’s house. “Fine, I admit defeat. I’ve never been more glad that your girls aren’t identical as I am now, Pollock.”

“Steeve and Gobi live next door,” Ray pointed the house out to Allis. “Who else…?”

“Am I missing some good gossip here?” Came Aki’s voice as she came over to greet them, and Ray and Shad beamed at her, rushing over and grabbing her arms to lead her towards Allis.

“This is Akysis, or Aki. She’s married to Dad’s boss’ son,” Ray explained. “But she’s really nice. She’s a seamstress so if you break your reaping clothes you can go to her and ask for help if you’ve got something to give in exchange.”

“Oh, so I’m short and Steeve’s afraid of spiders but Aki just gets ‘really nice’?” Pollock scoffed.

“We’re just being truthful,” Shad shrugged, which made Aki chortle.

“This is Allis, she’s training to be a fish cutter,” Ray introduced them. Allis gave a little curtsy, to which Aki returned.

“Lovely to meet you, Allis. Don’t be afraid to come to us if you need anything, my husband and my father in law look a little intimidating, but they’re soft and sweeter than ice cream,” Aki assured her.

“Are you related to the tailors in town?” Allis asked, which made the adults pause. “You just look a little bit like them.”

“That’s a lifetime ago, now,” Aki said with a sad smile. “Not anymore, I’m not. This is my home, and this is my family, and trust me when I say it’s actually much nicer than the town once you get settled in.” Aki turned to Pollock with a smile. “Has Tali played nicely today?”

“He always plays nicely, just very very quietly,” Pollock assured her. “You sure that boy can talk?”

“He talks at home, especially to his grandad. And what’s he need to talk for? Your girls do plenty of talking for him,” Aki teased, before shouting, “Tali! Come on, sweetie. It’s nearly time for tea.”

After a second of waiting, the front door opened and Tali rushed out into his mother’s arms as Aki picked him up, snuggling into him. “What do you say to Pollock for letting you play over today?”

Pollock’s daughters followed Tali out, alongside Steeve’s daughter Rasbora, smiling and waving good-bye at him while he hid his face again, Aki smoothing through his hair. Elly and Hali really did look little alike, with Hali’s black hair and Elly’s golden hair, but they held hands and smiled similarly. Aki leant towards Tali’s ear, whispering to him, “Can you remember what I said you can do if you don’t want to talk to people?”

Tali unwrapped himself a little from his mother’s arms, signing thank you at Pollock instead, to which Elly, Hali and Rasbora repeated back to him. “You’re absolutely welcome, Tali. It’s a pleasure to have you around. Come back anytime.”

“Tram will probably be picking people up again, getting ready to leave,” Ray explained, glancing at the clock through Pollock’s open door. “We’ll walk you to the tram stop.”

They waved good-bye to Pollock, Steeve, Rasbora, Hali and Elly before making their way back through the streets towards the tram stop, with Allis piping up once they were out of earshot. “Um, can I ask you something, and can you not be upset for me asking?”

“Depends on the question, really,” Ray offered, to which Shad elbowed him hard enough to elicit a yelp.

“’Course you can. What’s up?” Shad prompted.

“… The little golden haired girl. She looked… different.”

Elly did look different, to her sister and to most people in town, short and chubby, with heavy eyes and the brightest smile. Shad shrugged. “Mom says she was born that way, but she’s nice and happy and that’s all that matters. She talks different too, she signs like Nels but she can hear you.”

“They said, back home; some of our neighbours used to say the dockyard people would drown kids that were born different when they’re babies,” Allis stated quietly, which made both Shad and Ray pause. “I guess that’s not true?”

“Why would anyone ever drown a baby?” Ray asked, to which Allis shrunk away.

“I don’t know, that’s just what people said would happen,” Allis muttered.

“We don’t drown babies,” Shad insisted. “Whether they’re different or not. Pollock loves all four of his daughters. And if anyone heard tell of someone else drowning their child, I think there would be a lynch mob out after them.”

“That’s nice to know,” Allis nodded. “That you don’t kill babies, even if they’re different.”

“I still don’t know why someone would do that,” Ray insisted. “I mean, our parents tried for like twenty years to have us, and Danio and Aki lost their first child and they’re still really sad about it. Everyone I know thinks their kids are great even if they’re awful, no-one’s gonna kill them.”

They finally reached the tram stop, with Shad and Ray walking Allis to the door. “Here you go. Feel free to come knock on our door any time you want, Allis. We promise we won’t drown you for being different yourself.”

Allis smiled, an almost genuine smile, before wishing them a good night and retreating into the tram. They stood and watched it leave, before Ray elbowed Shad as hard as he could. “Luckiest lad on the docks tonight you, Shad.”

“What? Why me?” Shad asked.

“Because you finally got to talk to the death-smelling girl of your dreams,” Ray teased, Shad’s face dropping in shock, shoving Ray away as hard as he could.

“I don’t have a crush on her!” He insisted. “She’s just pretty!”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what they all say.”

At the school gates on Monday Twait finds Ray to thank him, which prompts Keeli to add, “Allis said you two were weird but nice, and asked me if there really wasn’t a way to tell you two apart.”

“You said no, right?” Ray asked, to which Keeli laughed.

“I told her I can tell you apart, but she has to figure out the difference for herself.”

The Victory Tour pulls around before Ray even realises it, and Candiru’s family is summoned to go face Altum’s killer in front of the whole of Panem. Shad and Ray consider going, but they’d barely even spoken to Candiru since she punched Shad, and ultimately it feels too awkward to go anywhere near her or her grieving family to ask if she wanted them there. Stone said she’d asked him not to go, so they don’t, and instead watch on the TV as Seeder doesn’t even acknowledge Altum’s family or how she had murdered an innocent fifteen year old in the name of living.

The school year passes by as ever, with training getting more and more intense as it slowly drew to an end, the teachers instructing them on all sorts of extra, strange things. They’re given information letters to hand back to their parents, which Dad reads with a look of discomfort on his face, but when Ray asks, he says its just a letter about the pre-Reaping party. It takes place immediately after school on the third of July finishing around eight at night, and if it falls on a weekend that year it still takes place but during the afternoon, instead. Yet despite his insistence that the letter is nothing to worry about, Dad won’t let Ray read it.

Reaping Day draws ever nearer, looming overhead like a terrifying monster, and Ray and Shad both find themselves staying awake at night much longer than they usually would, too worried to fall asleep, to bring the day nearer, to risk being called to go to the Capitol, and everyone around them just seems to be making it worse. Mom trades some of her fish to get them their reaping clothes, trading another fish to Aki to get her to fit them when the clothes are a little big. Stone’s older brother, Johnny, assures them that he’ll show them where to go on Reaping day, that he’ll collect them in the morning, that there was nothing to worry about at all, even as his chewed fingernails told them he was lying. Candiru’s family is rarely seen, except with alcohol, and Candiru seems to spend more and more time outside of her house, even apologising to Shad for punching him so she can beg to sleep on their floor that evening instead of going home. Mom lets her sleep on the sofa, tells her she can stay over whenever she wishes.

Reaping day is on a Wednesday that year. Their teacher tells them before the leave school the previous Friday that they’re going to go over everything they need to know for the reaping the next week, and Ray and his friends walk home in silence. Reaping day was close. Reaping day was way, way too close…

The weekend is subdued. Candiru sleeps over their house on the Friday night, and over at Stone’s the Saturday night, instead. Nangra turns up at the house on the Sunday morning to talk to Dad, stopping to assure Ray and Shad that they won’t get reaped, they’re each only in the reaping once, that everything will be fine, but Dad flinches at it, clearly not believing the assurances himself, and by Sunday night Ray starts to find himself wanting to just sleep until the reaping day had passed by, but considering it was getting harder and harder to fall asleep at all, he sincerely doubts that will happen.

They eat dinner in silence, and once their plates lay empty, Dad cleared his throat. “We have something very important to talk to you two about. About the Reaping Day.”

Ray swallowed down the lump in his throat, feeling Shad’s hand slide into his. Mom looked nervous too, and Dad took a deep breath before following. “I know you’re both worrying about it. But we’ve all gone through it. Neither your mother or I were ever reaped, and there may very well be a volunteer again this year even if your name is called, like what happened with Johnny or Koi. There’s no point losing sleep over it. If it happens, it happens. Nothing you can do to stop yours or your friends names being called. And neither of you have taken tesserae, so your chances are as good as they get.”

Ray and Shad both nodded, but clutched each other’s hands tightly. Dad closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before opening them.

“Ray, I know you’ve been doing really well at school, your reports say as much. No-one’s better in your class at fighting than you, and you even hold your own against the older students. We’re… we’re really proud,” Dad explained, slowly, carefully, before turning to Shad. “And Shad, we know you… aren’t. Your teacher’s say instead that you’re uninterested, and even when you try, you’re not holding your own in spars.”

“I don’t like fighting,” Shad insisted, before adding more quietly. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I know, Shad. I know. And while that’s normally a very good stance to have, if you were to get reaped, it would get you killed,” Dad explained, clenching his hands on the table. “Ray, can you remember when we first talked about sending you to the Academy, what we said about the Hunger Games?”

“You said I’d be less likely to die,” Ray muttered, to which Dad nodded.

“That’s right. Compare Altum and Tiller. Altum died a lot earlier than Tiller did because she didn’t go to the Academy, and the last Victor we had who didn’t go to the Academy was Xebec, back in the eighteenth games. If you don’t study at the Academy and you get reaped, you’ll die in the Games. And you know Shad can’t fight.”

“No, he’s awful when we spar with each other,” Ray agreed. “He doesn’t take it seriously.”

“I know,” Dad agreed, taking a deep breath, before continuing. “Ray, if Shad gets reaped, and there are no volunteers, you know he’s going to die. We all know he’ll die, but you have a chance to win. You have a real, tangible chance to get home. If Shad gets reaped, you have to volunteer in his place.”

The words settle in slowly into Ray’s mind, drip by drip, but its Shad who’s first to react, dropping Ray’s hand to slam the table. “No! I don’t want that! I don’t want to lose Ray, either! I’d rather die!”

“Shad,” Mom hissed.

“But I would!” Shad insisted. “I don’t want Ray to volunteer for me if I’m reaped, that’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

“Your brother has been trained on how to fight and win in the Games, if you’re sent Shad, we’re guaranteed to lose one of you, if Ray goes, we have a chance to keep you both. It only makes sense-”

“No it doesn’t! Shad insisted. “I don’t want Ray to die for me! I’d rather die for myself!”

“And what does Ray think?” Mom asked, as all eyes turned to him. Shad had said it exactly: Mom and Dad would rather he die than Shad, because even if he had a better chance to win, no one won the Hunger Games when they were twelve. Before he turned fifteen, the chances would be slim to none. If Shad was reaped, he’d die. But if Ray volunteered in his place, he’d die too, but Shad would be alive. His parents wanted Shad to live, at the cost of him. If ever there was an admission of who their favourite child was, it was right there.

“I’ll do it,” Ray confirmed quietly, Shad’s face falling while his parents looked relieved. Relieved they wouldn’t lose Shad, only ever risk losing Ray. The expendable child, the one who couldn’t follow in their footsteps, the child they loved less. So relieved to lose him and not Shad. He reached for Shad’s hand again, squeezing it as Shad started crying at the sheer thought of having to lose him, but honestly, Ray didn’t want to lose him either. Neither of them wanted to live without the other, even though everyone else wanted otherwise for them, and the only way Ray could guarantee Shad wouldn’t die in the Games, that he wouldn’t have to watch him grinded into paste like the kids when he was nine, or get his throat slit like Tiller, or decapitated like Camber, or impaled like Altum, was to go in his place. Die in his place. His parents might have their favourite, but Ray had his favourite in the family too, and he knew it wasn’t his parents. Not anymore. Never again.

“I’ll do it.”

Chapter Text

He’d gone to bed early, refusing to speak to his parents again that night. Shad curled up with him in bed, clinging to him tightly, as if afraid letting go would lose Ray to the reaping, and in the morning Shad still wouldn’t let go of Ray, even as he had to wake up and get ready for school. Mom and Dad tried to speak with Ray, tried to wish him a good day, but he ignored them, speaking only to Shad. They had all made their choices last night. Mom and Dad wanted him dead, so why speak to them? Why not act like a corpse ahead of time, get them ready for the inevitable? But Shad desperately wanted him to live, so that was fine. Ray could speak to him.

Shad walked him to the tram stop, Ray having to pry his fingers off of his hand before he stepped on board, watching Shad wave good-bye to him through the window as he headed off to school once more. The district flashed by him as they travelled, Ray’s thoughts still reeling from last night. That had always been Mom and Dad’s plan, hadn’t it? Train one of them to volunteer in the place of the other. Maximise their chances of getting at least one child to adulthood, even if it meant sacrificing the other. Maybe that’s why they only taught Shad how to fish, so he could carry on the Odair tradition, while Ray was meant to be dead. Wasn’t like they were expecting or even wanting the two of them, anyway, and Shad was named in line with the family tradition, of naming your child after the first fish you caught. He was just named for a fish his parents liked.

He doesn’t feel much like talking when he meets up with Jonah outside of school, either, or Zabra when she joins them, but when Keeli arrives, Ray recognises the look of her face, the exact same look he carries, and when she refuses to talk too, he gets a sinking feeling he knows what is wrong. He takes her aside, away from Jonah and Zabra.

“Mom and Dad want me to volunteer for Shad if he’s reaped,” Ray admitted, to which Keeli’s breath hitched. “They want him to live and me to die.”

“That’s awful,” Keeli whispered, wrapping him up in a hug which Ray returned for a few seconds before letting go of her. “At the orphanage, they said I’ve got to volunteer in place of someone too, Annabelle Figurehead, but I don’t know who she is. They said her parents paid for me to go to the Academy, and if I don’t volunteer for her if she’s reaped, then they’ll kill me anyway.”

“That’s worse,” Ray insisted. “So that’s why there’s so many kids from the orphanage at the Academy? Rich people pay for it so you guys die in place of their children?” Keeli nodded, and Ray felt sick to his stomach. So, what, the inland and town’s rich people thought the dockyards would drown babies if they were different, then turn around and have orphans die in place of their own kids? What disgusting double standards they had…

They have a special assembly at school that day, where they’re all lined up in age groups, with the headmaster stood on the stage at the far end. No-one in any year younger than theirs is in the assembly, and they’re stood right at the back too, so they can barely even see the stage. The headmaster clears his throat, tapping his microphone.

“Good morning, students. Reaping day is upon us again, and once more we want there to be as little surprise or worry as possible for everyone. So we’re going to go through a mock reaping as we do every year, to show the youngest of our students what they’re meant to do in the justice square on Wednesday. For purposes of demonstration, I am taking the role of the district’s Mayor, Mr Erasmus is taking the role of the escort, and two students will be selected at random to take the role of the tributes. Mr Erasmus, if you wouldn’t mind…”

Headmaster Stern stepped back as Mr Erasmus, the final year teacher, stepped forward. “The most important thing for you all to learn is the timing of volunteering. Our escorts get very specific instructions on how to ask for volunteers to keep things the same each year. For anyone who wants to volunteer for glory, you must put your hand up and declare ‘I volunteer as tribute’ the first time the escort requests a volunteer, else you may lose your chance. If there are no volunteers, the escort will ask again, and for any student who has been asked to volunteer in place of another child, this is when you will volunteer, so as to not impede on anyone who genuinely wishes to go to the Games. There will be one last opportunity to volunteer after this, after which the chance will be gone forever. Do not miss your chance. Let me demonstrate.”

He asks for volunteers three times, with Stern explaining when each group should volunteer, and then they have a full, fake reaping day, complete with fake mayoral speech. Twait is the fake tribute for the boys, and a girl Ray doesn’t recognise is fake reaped too, and once more Mr Erasmus asks for volunteers, of which there are none, and Ray feels sick to his stomach.

At home, once more, Mom and Dad try to talk to him, try to get him to speak, but Ray ignores them, eating his tea and heading for bed without even a kiss or hug goodnight. Even though Mom and Dad both offer them, he ignores the offer, curling up in bed and waiting for Shad to join him, getting a hug from him instead.

The next day at school, the last day before the Reaping, their teacher goes through a few more pieces of protocol, that they needed to dress smartly, what time to reach the square, different transport options for people who lived further inland. She also explains that they need to try and stay calm and collected if they are reaped, that they need to walk up to the stage with a smile if they want to be charming, or crying if they want to play scared. But there’s only one piece of advice that really sticks in Ray’s mind, and that’s because its aimed solely at him.

“Ray, you said before you have an identical twin brother, right?” Mrs Cane asked, to which Ray nodded. “How identical, exactly?”

“Uh, completely,” Ray shrugged. “Only Keeli can tell us apart, not even Mom and Dad can.”

“And your reaping clothes, how similar are they?” Mrs Cane asked, to which Ray shrugged.

“They look the same to me, Mom said there was little point getting anything too different, cos Shad and I just swap clothes around anyway.”

“You can’t stand in the crowd with your brother tomorrow,” Mrs Cane stated, to which Ray frowned. Where else would he stand? He had to be there to support Shad, and Shad to support him! “If something goes wrong, goes seriously, seriously wrong tomorrow, which doesn’t often but can happen, they’ll search out a scapegoat to replace a tribute, and standing out in any way will put you at higher risk. Having identical twins stood side by side will increase the risk of either you or your brother being forced into being the tribute. You need to stand apart. As far away as you can get.”

“Go wrong in what way?” Ray asked, to which Mrs Cane sighed, sitting down behind her desk, tapping her fingers on the wood.

“When I was seventeen, the girl who was reaped tried to run for it. The peacekeepers shot her dead, and when her little sister tried to fight her way to her body, they forced her to be the tribute instead. And she did not get home. When things go wrong, they will look for a scapegoat, and they will look for the most interesting child to take that place. That may be someone who just messed up, or it might be the tallest person in the crowd, or the prettiest, or half a set of identical twins. If you’re stood apart, you don’t look quite so obviously the same, and your risk decreases.”

“But I want to stand with Shad,” Ray insisted.

“It’s safer for both of you if you don’t.”

They carry on with lessons for the rest of the day, with some last minute swimming training down by the pool, too. Back on the boats, they’re taught how to save someone who’s drowned, how to resuscitate them, get the water out of their lungs, keep them breathing, but here the topic instead is how to drown people. They practice with floating dummies, but they look too much like real people for Ray’s comfort, and that same creeping nausea rises up in him again.

That evening its the pre-reaping day party, and for the first time they’re allowed to attend. All the students their age and older congregate in the assembly hall, helping themselves to a beautiful buffet laid out, the older students being offered a single glass of alcohol, too, while they just get to eat the food. But its not a fun party: there’s no beach, no ocean to swim in, no sand castles to make or games to play. There’s just standing around and chatting, and its so dull, it does nothing for Ray’s mounting anxiety, which reaches its peak as the night draws to a close.

The headmaster stands at the front of the room, declaring who their ‘backed tributes’ are, as two eighteen year old boys and two eighteen year old girls are called to the front of the room, and Ray has to find Jonah, who’d spent most of the evening going around chatting with people Ray didn’t recognise, to ask what that even means.

“They’re the kids who’ve earned the right to volunteer because the Academy believes they could win,” Jonah explained. “But they’re not forced to do it. It doesn’t sound like anyone wants to volunteer this year.”

No volunteers… Just as he feared… and unlike Shad he didn’t have to wait and see if his name was called to find that out, he knew ahead of time. If they were called, he was going to the Games. And that revelation sends Ray running to the bathroom again, the buffet racing up to greet him, tears streaming down his face as Jonah once more rubs his back to comfort him.

“It’s alright, Ray,” Jonah assured him. “It’s okay. You’re only in once. They’re not gonna pull your name.”

“I’m in twice,” Ray confessed, pushing the palms of his hands into his eyes. “Mom and Dad want me to volunteer if Shad is reaped. I’m in twice, once for me and once for him.” Jonah’s breath hitched, pulling Ray into a hug, while Ray continued, “This could be my last fourteen hours in District 4 ever, and I’m spending it crying on a bathroom floor.”

“It’s awful,” Jonah agreed. “That they’re making you do that. It’s just not right.”

They don’t hear the party ending, one of the teachers comes into the bathroom to kick them out of the school, but on seeing Ray he at least decides to walk him to the tram stop. The tram is eerily silent that night: no-one else down the docks is attending the Academy, and everyone else who takes the tram is already in bed, shivering in fear for what tomorrow might bring. There’s just him, all alone that evening, making his way through the streets of home, listening to the terrified crying of his friends as he passes by their houses.

The sight at home is no better.

As soon as he walks through the front door, he’s affronted by the smell of vomit, and the sight of Shad sat rocking on the sofa as Mom and Dad try to comfort him, wide eyed with terror, all heads lifting to look at Ray as he walked through the door. Mom rushes forward at the disheveled sight of Ray, but Ray pushes her away, instead pulling Shad into a tight hug, the only person who really understood. The only person he wanted for comfort, the only person who cared.

“I don’t want you to go,” Shad whispered into his ear. “Please Ray, don’t volunteer if I’m reaped. Please, please don’t. I can’t lose you, I can’t.”

“I can’t lose you, either,” Ray whispered back. “I don’t want to go, but you can’t go. You can’t. You’ll die and I’ll feel awful.”

“You’re only in the Reaping once,” Dad said quietly. “You’re not going to get Reaped, either of you.”

“I’ll be alright, Shad,” Ray insisted, squeezing his as tight as he could, Shad squeezing back. “I promise. We’re going to be alright.”

It seemed to take forever for Ray to fall asleep that night, curled up with Shad, both sobbing in fear, but they’re allowed to sleep in, at least. School is cancelled for the day. There’s no where else to go, no where else to be. They manage to sleep in until eight before finally both crawling out of bed, still holding onto each other tightly, stepping out of their room and into the dining room, where Dad was sat at the dining table, looking up as they entered.

“Morning, boys. Come, take a seat. We need to have a talk,” Dad explained, pointing to the seats. Shad dragged Ray along to them, each boy pulling out his chair in sync. Dad drummed his fingers on the table.

“There are thousands of kids in that Reaping bowl. Many have their names in many, many times. Johnny alone has his name in thirty-five times. The chances of your names being pulled are slim, but they’re not none. I know that. And I need you both to know that if your name is pulled, you do not run. You do not fight it. You go along with it, do whatever it is you have to do, because you cannot fight against this and win. You get reaped, you can lose your life. But if you run, if you cause problems, you can lose so much more.”

“Like what?” Shad asked, but Dad just shook his head.

“Everything. You can lose everything.”

“My teacher said she knew someone who tried to run. She got shot, and her little sister was made to be the tribute instead,” Ray explained quietly. Dad shuddered.

“Believe it or not, that’s the best case scenario. You don’t want to know how much worse it can be. It can get so, so much worse.” Dad paused, before standing to his feet, grabbing something from the kitchen, and returning with three small glasses and his bottle of rum. “The Games are the Capitol’s way of showing they have the ultimate power over us. You try and show them up, even a little, and they’ll do everything in their power to put you back into your place. Nothing is safe from them.”

Dad poured a little rum into each of the glasses. “I was twelve, at the time of the first Reaping. We were the very first kids to be rounded up into that Justice Square, guns pointed to our heads, our parents kept back. I remember so many parents fighting to get their child back out of the crowd, getting shot dead there and then in front of them. So many parents were certain they were just going to round us all in to one place and shoot us all dead. They assured us if we played along, only two children would be killed. If we rebelled, they’d kill us all. That was the arrangement struck for the Hunger Games. Two children each year from each district, to save the rest of them.”

Dad slid two of the glasses over to them, taking the third one for himself. Ray wrapped his fingers around the glass, while Shad picked his up, giving it a sniff, but not drinking it. “The morning of the Reaping, my father took me aside, said whatever happened that day, he wasn’t going to let me die without knowing the taste of rum. ‘If they’ll punish you for the crimes of adults, then the least they can do is let you taste the joys of adulthood, too,’ he’d said. The Capitol kept their promise. They didn’t kill us all. They just took two children. Reef Seacock, and Lota Spinnaker. Lota was also only twelve. He was… my best friend. Nangra, Lota, and Wobbe, as inseperable as you two. Lota’s family weren’t even rebels.”

Dad’s voice cracked, and he coughed to cover it over. “The Spinnaker’s refused to get involved. Two of my brothers and two of my sisters were executed for crimes against the Capitol during the Dark Days, as well as my mother, but the Spinnakers were innocent, and the Capitol rewarded them by taking their son. His father rushed out to try and stop them. They shot him dead in front of everyone, including Lota. Then Lota’s mother, too, because she rushed out to get to her husband. And Lota’s seven year old sister. All slaughtered. Nangra would have run out too, had I not held him tight to stop him doing anything stupid.”

“Dad, that’s awful,” Shad said quietly, and Dad slowly nodded.

“So if either of you are Reaped, you’ll just go along with it. You’ll smile and head up onto the stage, because they can and will kill everyone you know and love if you do anything else. And you will know that your mother and I, as much as we hope we could, won’t do anything to stop them. You don’t deserve to have the last thing you see before you’re sent away to be us bleeding to death on the flagstones.”

Dad raised his glass, to which Ray and Shad hesitantly lifted theirs too. “Whatever happens today, know that I love you both, and know that, for all my screw-ups, all I want for either of you is a better life than the one I’ve had. For all your friends to survive the Reapings, for all your children to make it to adulthood, for the Games to not haunt you the way they haunt me. Will you share a toast with me now, for those we’ve already lost to the Games?”

He held his glass out to them, as Shad and Ray gently hit their glasses against his. “For Lota,” Dad declared.

“For Altum,” Shad and Ray said in unison, watching as Dad threw the shot of rum back down his throat in one. Ray lifted the glass to his lips, taking a sip and trying not to gag. It tasted awful, simply awful, and it took him a few tries to actually drink even the small amount placed in his glass. A glance at Shad showed he was having much the same trouble.

“You boys have a few hours before you need to get dressed and ready to go to the Reaping,” Dad declared. “Why don’t you go for a quick walk by the sea? It might be your last chance.”

They do, meeting up with Stone as he was sat outside of his house, pale and clammy, and without a word between them, they knock on Candiru’s door to invite her too. They don’t speak at all, just walk along the beach in silence, skimming any good rocks they can find, until its time to head home.

They get dressed together, and Ray can feel that same nausea rising in his throat, squeezing Shad’s hand for comfort and support, getting a squeeze back. Mom checks over them, makes sure their clothes sit nicely, smoothing out their hair, giving each of them a kiss. It’s then that Ray finally turns to Shad to tell him the bad news.

“My teacher says we’re not to stand together during the Reaping,” he said, watching as Shad’s face, full of anxiety, suddenly changed to one of panic.

“What? No! No! You’ve got to stay with me, Ray, I can’t go alone, I can’t, please,” Shad begged. “I need to stick with you, what if one of us is called? I can’t stand alone.”

“You won’t be alone, you’ll be with Stone, and I’ll be with Jonah. It’s just in case something goes wrong, we’re more likely to be singled out if we stand out. It’s going to be okay,” Ray assured him, pulling Shad into a hug, which Shad returned, squeezing him as hard as he could. “We’ll be home soon, Shad. It’s going to be okay.”

It was especially going to be okay for Shad. Even if his name was drawn, he wasn’t going to go. He would be home so much sooner than Ray might be…

The streets were filled with their neighbours: families with kids in the Reaping heading to the Justice Square, those who didn’t have anyone in the Reaping stood around, wishing the kids luck as they passed by. Nangra gave them a pat on the back as they passed by, Danio, Aki and Tali waving at them as they went, Danio announcing that they had fish set aside for the party that night when they all came back in just a couple of hours. It felt like walking to his own execution, passing through the crowds, and Ray grabbed for Shad’s hand as they met up with Stone and Candiru, with Johnny greeting them with a nod. It was Johnny’s last year in the Reaping, but there was no joy on his face. His odds for not getting drawn were awful, and he’d already been reaped once. How likely was it for him to be reaped again?

It was a short walk to the Justice Square, meaning that by the time they got there, it was already nearly full. Many kids had to travel hours to get to it from living so far in land or in the town, meaning they got there early to avoid being late, so the square was packed, leaving just the dockyard kids to still register their names. Johnny walked them through it, registering himself first, guiding Stone to do the same next. Parents clung to the edges of the square, trying to pack themselves in where there was room, trying to give reassuring waves and smiles to their children. Within the square many kids had already seperated out, by age and gender, but some were still intermingling. As he registered, Ray’s heart felt like it was pounding in his ears, drowning out the instructions he was given by the person marking his name down, feeling Shad’s hand slip into his as Shad stepped forward to register too. Only one voice caught his attention.

“It’s going to be okay, Allis. I promise. You’re only in once. They’re not going to pull your name. I’ll take you to the beach afterwards, yeah? We’ll get those nice clothes ruined, I promise.” Ray looked up to see Twait stood, towering over his little sister, initially holding her shoulders before pulling her into a tight hug. “You’re only in once, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

A yell went out, an order for everyone to get into place, and Ray watched as Twait let go of Allis, pushing her towards where Keeli was waiting, catching sight of Ray staring and waving at him, before pulling Allis away into the crowd of girls. Ray gave Shad’s hand one last squeeze before letting go, not daring to turn and look at him as he pushed further into the crowd, until he found Jonah, who was keeping a brave face but seemed just as terrified as Ray did. People were exiting from the Justice Building, people he didn’t recognise, until the Victors stepped out, one by one. A thought suddenly hit Ray.

“If I have to volunteer for Shad, does that mean Mags won’t mentor me, because I volunteered?” He asked Jonah, as quietly and urgently as he could, sagging with relief as Jonah shook his head.

“My cousin says she only mentors other districts when both of our tributes are the backed tributes and both volunteered. If you go at all, she’ll be your mentor.”

The relief was immeasurable as Ray turned back to staring at the stage, as the mayor read out a speech, describing the rebellion of the Dark Days, of why the Hunger Games were held every year, as a sign of the Capitol’s power and the Capitol’s generosity. It was just like Dad has said this morning: they could so easily just shoot dead all the kids in the square, nothing would stop the Capitol, and they could just take two children from each District and execute them instead, but at least they didn’t. At least every child had a chance to survive, no matter how slim and remote the chance was. And then the speech was over, and their escort, Decimus, stepped forward. He reminded Ray a little of the headmaster, with a mean, stern face, dressed in appropriately sombre attire, only his face was weird, all painted with make-up like the town women wore. He stepped forward to one of the bowls where all the slips of paper sat.

“Ladies first,” He declared, slamming his hand into the bowl of papers, rifling through them all, and Ray’s breath caught in his throat. Candiru has her name in five times, and Keeli had her name in twice, while Zabra was only in once. Ray didn’t want any of them to be reaped, or anyone else for that matter. Please, please just let Decimus pull his hand out of that bowl empty, declare it all to be a joke, and for them all to go home…

Except…

He didn’t, and Decimus settled on one of the strips of paper, pulling it out and stepping back to the microphone, clearing his throat. Ray seemed to forget how to breathe.

“Orna Seawall,” He declared, and Ray sagged with relief. He had absolutely no idea who that was, but the girl moved out from the crowd anyway, from within the gaggle of sixteen year olds, shaking as she walked. He didn’t recognise her from the Academy, or from the docks. An inland kid, then; she looked too small and thin to be a town kid.

She made her way onto the stage, and volunteers were asked for, but none stepped forward, and Ray could see from the corner of his eye as Keeli and Allis both were awash with relief. They’d escaped the Reaping, but would he…?

Decimus made his way over to the second bowl, digging around, pulling names down from the sides, mixing them through with the names at the bottom, and Ray could feel Jonah’s hand clench his in fright, and Ray squeezed back, glad for someone to hold for comfort and strength. It seemed to never end, Decimus rooting through that bowl, and Ray thought of all the people who could be reaped, thought of Johnny, with his name in so many, many times, many more times than Altum had her name in last year, and he hoped beyond hope he couldn’t recognise this name either.

Decimus settled on a strip of paper, returning to the microphone, and time seemed to freeze, there and then. His fate was sealed. Decimus wasn’t going to change paper now. Whoever’s name was on that strip, their luck had run out. Decimus opened the strip, clearing his throat again, staring at the name written upon it.

“List Fairlead,” He declared, and Ray felt dizzy with the sudden intake of air he took in. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t any name he recognised, and as he watched a boy exit from the crowd of eighteen year olds, he was certain he hadn’t even seen him in passing at the Academy, either. Two strangers. It was the best he could have hoped for.

Once more, there were no volunteers, just the muffled sobs in the distance of List and Orna’s family crying out for them, and then, it was over. It was over. He’d survived his first ever Reaping; it was over.

The crowd seemed to bustle and break, parents rushing forward to grab their children, to head home, to hug them, to do whatever they wanted or needed to do. Jonah was dragged away by his mother almost the second the crowds started moving, to Jonah’s loud protests, promising he’d meet up with Ray again tomorrow, but Ray was already pushing his own way through the crowd, to where Shad was pushing towards him, wrapping their arms around each other once more.

“That was awful,” Shad whispered. “Poor List and Orna…”

“I know, but at least it wasn’t us,” Ray assured him. “At least it wasn’t us. It wasn’t us…”

It wasn’t them, and it wasn’t any of their friends, either. Two inland kids. Two kids who, had they not been reaped, Ray would never have ever known their names.

Johnny catches up with Stone too, giving his baby brother a tight hug, before ushering all three of them back towards their parents, only to be shoved aside by Twait as he forced his way through the crowd.

“Watch it, lubber,” Johnny yelled after him, but Twait wasn’t listening, too busy reuniting with his sister with a big hug that saw her pulled off of the floor.

“I said it’d be fine,” he assured her. “I’m never wrong, am I? Told you before, I know everything.”

“I hated that,” Allis whispered to him. “Can we go to the beach now?”

“Oh, we’re going to the beach too!” Shad declared, pushing his way towards her as Johnny yelled at him to come back, Ray rushing after him. “You should come with us! Danio’s got fish!”

“Ray, come on, give us a minute here, kid,” Twait disparged him, while Shad scowled.

“I’m not Ray, who are you?” Shad insisted.

“Don’t play stupid, kid. What are you-” Twait paused as Ray pushed his way forward, visibly looking between the two of them with a look of confusion. “Uh. Right. Look for two of you. Now it makes sense...”

“Twait, this is Shad, my brother. Shad, this is Twait, Allis’ brother. Also named for a type of shad. You two have a lot in common,” Ray joked. But all the talk of shads had grabbed someone else’s attention.

“Shad!” Keeli yelled, rushing forward so fast she knocked Allis into Twait before practically throwing herself at Shad. “I’ve missed you, Shad! How are you? How’s school?”

“Better since the Reaping ended,” Shad confirmed with a laugh, wrapping Keeli up in a tight hug. “Hi Keeli, are you coming to the beach too? I bet everyone would love to see you again, everyone’s missed you!”

Keeli pouted. “I gotta get back to the orphanage. They get really upset if you stay out late and they said to be back immediately after the Reaping.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” Twait declared, unwrapping his arms from around Allis. “Way I see it, you forgot the instructions and asked an older boy what you were meant to do, and said older boy said you were allowed to stay out late, so long as he was with you, and so you went to the beach party with everyone else, right?” Twait offered, giving Keeli a wink. “Reckon there’ll be fish to spare for a couple of orphans to join uninvited?”

“Keeli’s one of us, so there will be fish for her, and Allis is practically one of us, now. Betta thinks she’s great,” Ray insisted. “So they’ll get fish. You might starve though.”

“Eh. Worth it for a night of celebration.”

Mom and Dad hugged them both tight enough to hurt, trying to voice as many reassurances as they could squeeze out before Ray and Shad struggled loose of their grasps, reminding them of the party the rest of the dockyards were planning, before rushing home to change into beach wear and out of their reaping clothes, discarding them to a little drawer, ready for next year instead. With no where else to go to get changed, Twait and Allis followed them home, changing behind their privacy curtain that seperated Ray and Shad’s bed from their parents bed, while Keeli had to ask around for some beach clothes to borrow, since she hadn’t come prepared. Within an hour of the Reaping finishing, they were all down at the beach, playing in the waves, celebrating another year of not recognising the tributes.

Simply playing in the water slowly evolved into a full party as the day wore on; some of Twait’s friends from the orphanage joined them in the ocean too, Seine and Dunnage and Clew. Nangra barbequed the fish while all the littler kids, the ones not in the Reaping yet, tried to join in with the games, too, splashing in the shallows, squealing with joy when they were welcomed into the games with the older kids. Pollock and Steeve’s daughters ganged up with Angel to try and drag Twait into the water for Allis’ amusement, but three four year olds and a gangly ten year old stood no chance against someone his height, although he was a fair sport about it, making the game fun. It wasn’t until the girls finally managed to drag Tali, who’d been quietly enjoying a swim with his Pa, into the game with them that Twait finally conceeded defeat and allowed them to pull him under the waves, feigning death at the hands of a gaggle of giggling children.

When it was finally time to serve the fish, Nangra handed them out to the kids in the reaping first, prioritising the dockyard kids, before giving the teens from the orphanage some too, telling any adult who complained to ‘get stuffed’ as he did so. The kids too young for the reaping came next, with the adults getting the leftovers, and the alcohol. The teens in their last year of the reaping were allowed some too, and so the party stretched on late into the night, everyone in high spirits at a year going by without one of their friends or neighbours getting sent off to the Games.

Keeli played with them all night, laughing and joking, and it was like she’d never left the dockyards. The adults seemed overjoyed to see her too, and she really was just as much fun as she had been when she was six, showing off that she could tell Ray and Shad apart like it was the greatest party trick ever, although she’s careful to never do it when Ray and Shad were trying to prank or tease someone else, and she still refuses to tell anyone else how she can do it. The closest she gets is when Allis begs her to tell her, and Keeli just laughs.

“Sorry Allis, but I think the real secret is that they won’t show how I tell them apart to anyone else,” Keeli answered with a shrug. “Only to me. But if what Ray says is right, I bet you could figure it out soon enough.”

“What? What does he say, like?” Allis asked, and Keeli just grinned.

“You’ll find out one day.”

Around midnight Twait finally drags Allis and Keeli away, with Shad begging Keeli to come back down to the beach to play again one day soon. All the adults seem to be beyond drunk, often having to be dragged home by their own children, in Candiru’s case, or by exasperated spouses and in-laws, in Aki’s case, and even curled up in their bed, listening to their father drunkenly giggle from within his bed as Mom tried to shush him, giggling herself, Ray can hear the party continue down on the beach.

The party was so good, he’d even forgotten that the Capitol had stolen away two children to die.

Come morning Ray and Shad get themselves up and ready for school, because Mom and Dad are still too hungover to drag themselves out of bed, but Ray reckons if they’re old enough for the Reaping, they’re old enough to make themselves breakfast. Shad walks Ray to the tram stop, waving good-bye as he leaves, and once again Ray trundles off to school, still riding the high of not being reaped and the party last night, even if he was still really sleepy.

Keeli beats him to school, and they end up chatting about the party while they wait for the others to join them, Jonah arriving next.

“It’s so not fair,” Jonah pouted. “You two got to celebrate on the beach? We went to the park instead, and it was really boring. I wish I could’ve gone to the beach.”

“Next time just run away and let your mom try and find you,” Ray suggested with a grin. “Then play down the beach with us instead!”

Ray and Keeli tell him all about the fun games they’d played together, having to explain to Jonah who half of their neighbours are, and Ray is recounting the children’s attempt at drowning Twait when Zabra arrives, with absolutely no cheer in her, and tears still on her face.

“I know them both,” she explained with horror, and all the cheer exits the three of them. Somehow, in all the excitement of last night, Ray had completely forgotten that there was still people out there who had known the tributes, who had loved the tributes, and had wished solemnly that the names that were called were strangers to them, instead. Keeli pulls Zabra into a hug. “Orna’s whole family works for us, she’s always sweet to me, and List delivers us fish. I don’t want to see them in the Games!”

They comfort her as much as they can, but Ray knows there’s very little that’ll actually help. They’re completely powerless to do anything but watch every choice List and Orna make and hope they only make the right ones.

Their teacher welcomes them back from the Reaping with a bright smile and a ‘I told you you’d be fine’ attitude, before they get back to learning more about the Games. This year they learn about the training aspect: the two and a half days between the parade and the scores, where they have to try and score as highly as they can to get the most sponsors.

“You can score low as a tactic too,” Their teacher had explained. “To make people think you’re less of a threat. But you’ll get less sponsors that way, and as District 4 tributes, everyone else in the Arena will think you’re a threat regardless of your age or score. As young tributes, its best to score as highly as you can.”

They go over all the different stations that will be present, which are split into survival or combat stations. Ray thinks the snares sound like good fun to learn about, but everyone else says they sound boring. Apparently there’s even plant identifying stations, which their teacher says might give tributes a better idea as to what will be in the Arena, but everyone thinks it sounds so dull, they barely even touch upon it.

They watch the parade at Stone’s home, and Stone doesn’t question why neither Shad nor Ray seem to want to be at home very much at the moment. Considering Candiru practically lives in Stone’s house too, he’s probably used to it. They watch the parade, with List and Orna dressed as mermaids, looking absolutely harrassed, when the commentator explains that their stylist would be retiring at the end of these Games, barring a District 4 Victor requiring a Victory Tour outfit.

“Wonder who they’ll get to replace them?” Shad asked.

“Usually we get an established stylist from a different district, not a new one,” Stone’s dad explained. “So hopefully they’ll already be really good.”

Ray tries to practice the snares more, but he just can’t get a hang of them, instead writing down the instructions to try them again with Shad while they’re waiting for the scores to be announced. Shad has a knack for them, the knots seeming completely effortless in his nimble hands, and he begs Ray to sneak him more snare instructions to play with. They pause in their efforts to watch the scores get announced: List scores a ten, Orna scores an eight, and Ray lists off his predicted odds for them, which they then compare to what the Capitol posits after the scores are all released. Ray was right: the favourite to win that year is the girl from district 2, who scored a ten and probably weighs more than the three smallest tributes combined, and the least favourite is the boy from 6, fourteen years old and blind as a bat. List comes in third favourite, and Orna is seventh, both of which are pretty good odds, especially for non-Academy students.

The day before the interviews is spent practicing interviews again at school, with people trying to guess what List and Orna’s angles will be. At home, he has to wander down to the beach to find Shad, who’s digging in the sand with Candiru and Stone silently. Ray joins them, not even questioning what they’re digging for. Candiru breaks the silence.

“Everything just feels like a repeat of last year,” she explained. “Like everyone in all of Panem has already forgotten Altum. It’s not fair.”

“Everyone else might, but we won’t ever forget her,” Stone insisted. “I think of her every day, you know.”

“We were talking about her at school,” Ray added, to which Candiru’s head snapped up, a scowl on her face. “My friend, Zabra, said our tributes this year are too nice, that they’ll play nice people in the interviews, and I told everyone that Altum was the nicest person down the docks and she got to play a heel.”

“I wonder how they decide what angle to make people play,” Stone asked.

“At the academy, you get to choose your angle ahead of time once you’re fourteen, but Jonah says that our mentors will help a non-academy student pick one depending on how they look, how they’ve acted up to that point, and what the tribute feels they can do,” Ray explained.

“So why did Altum play a heel?” Candiru asked. “She was always too nice to us all…”

“Mags says it’s fun to lie though, to the Capitol. She said it doesn’t really matter if you tell the truth or not, so you should at least have a little bit of fun. Maybe Altum just wanted to play the bad guy because it was fun and she didn’t have to worry about upsetting her friends,” Ray offered, but Stone scowled, deep in thought.

“Who’s Mags?”

“I think she’s one of the Victors,” Shad added. “From 9, or 12, or something.”

“She’s one of our Victors, she founded the Academy,” Ray insisted. “She just mentors for districts without a Victor when we have two career tributes. She’s very nice.”

“She brought Altum back from the Games,” Candiru said quietly. “She kept her wet for us.”

They lapse into silence for a long while after that, continuing to dig, dig, dig, until Candiru pipes up again. “She gave us some money to buy clothes to bury her in, and to buy some food to eat, too. Mom said she was the only stranger who gave us sympathy that she actually believed was being sincere.”

The next night they watch the interviews over at Stone’s house, and Stone’s dad jokingly asks if Shad and Ray had fallen out with their parents, since they don’t watch anything at their house, but he must know he’s hit the nail on the head as he gets quiet and quickly changes the subject. Orna comes across as really sweet and innocent, while List is a lot more cocky, confident in his abilities and his score of 10. None of the other tributes stick out to Ray.

As Ray still isn’t talking to their parents, and Shad sticks with Ray as always, they watch the start of the Games from the square instead of from home, taking Stone with them, while Candiru stays at her home instead. They raise the tributes up into a field, the cornucopia situated at the top of a really steep hill that all the tributes find themselves at the base of. A small lake takes up a portion of the Arena floor, and from the scant shots Ray can see it teeming with fish life. Its a fantastic Arena for any District 4 tribute, really.

List and Orna have both joined the career pack, both rushing to reach the cornucopia so as to join the fighting. Both of them favour tridents. Both of them kill a tribute in the blood bath, and both of them survive. The crowd cheers them both on; unlike last year, where everyone in the dockyards had a clear favourite, people are just keen to have either of them return alive for once. A victor was a victor either way, and a victor meant care packages, meant a volunteer next year, rather than a twelve year old child getting reaped and sent to their death.

The first day sees eleven people die in the blood bath, but the entire career pack makes it through. The girl from 2, the favourite to win, takes up the role as leader, with both List and Orna listening to and obeying her commands without argument. They set up camp in the cornucopia itself, a fantastic fortress, and eat the supplies from the cornucopia without heading down to the lake to fish, only leaving their camp to go hunt other tributes. They find and kill two more.

At school the next day their teacher goes over making camp in the Arena, explaining the benefits their tributes had in staying in high ground where they could look out across the Arena with ease. No tributes could sneak up on them in there, or at least, that’s what they all assume.

The cameras follow the boy from 3 as he sets up various traps, most of which the career pack spot and disarm, but the one thing that isn’t spotted is when he poisons the lake on the fifth day. No-one’s sure just where he got the poison from, even the commentators seem at a loss, but he gathers as much water as he can in his drinking bottles before pouring the concentrated poison into the water, the fish rapidly dying as it spreads through the water, a warning for anyone who steps near it.

A warning that is missed.

They all watch, shouting to try and dissuade him, as List misses the dead fish in the water, swimming out into the lake, realising only as his legs seize up that something was wrong. Something was deadly wrong. Orna screams for him from the shoreline, but the poison works too well, too fast, seeping through his skin, freezing his muscles, and he sinks like a lead weight to the bottom of the lake. There’s nothing anyone can do but watch in horror as List drowns, unable to save himself, a warning for everyone else in the Arena.

Zabra is inconsolable, although they do try, all three of them wrapping her up in a hug as she sobs, telling them everything she knew about him. He was a fantastic swimmer, and an even better fisherman, selling fish to her father to keep his younger siblings fed. He liked to tease her for being from money, he used to joke about getting her to marry his little brother so they could get the money, too. He’d only just lost his parents, trying to raise his little brother and sister all by himself so they wouldn’t end up in the orphanage, and there’s another horror in that alone: if his little siblings ended up in the orphanage, they might end up at the Academy, too. And from there, in the Games once more.

Had the boy from 3 doomed List’s entire family?

No one from the dockyards seems particularly perturbed by List’s death, and Ray has to tell Shad that they should be sad about it, that List sounded like a really nice guy, for anyone other than him to even really care about his death as anything other than disappointment that the chances of them getting a Victor was just halved. He’s pretty sure if he brought it up to Candiru, she’d care, too, but they see less and less of her as the Games progress, and it doesn’t feel right at all to go knock on her door just to ask her to be sad with them.

Orna ends up killing the boy from 3, severely wounding him with her trident before dragging him to the lake, throwing him in to suffer the same fate as List did. No other tributes put up a good fight against the pack, and with the boy from 3 dead, the career pack slowly hunt out and kill the remaining tributes, until there’s only Orna, the girl from 2, and both tributes from District 1 remaining.

They gather in the square to watch the final fight, but its over too soon. The tributes from District 1 band together, the boy decapitating Orna with one swift fell of his axe, while the girl from 1 and the girl from 2 fight it out, the finishing blow being delivered by the boy from 1 against the girl from 2 while she’s distracted with the fight, only for him to be disemboweled by his district partner the second he’s no longer needed, and the girl from one is the Victor. They are left without a Victor once more, and the entirety of the dockyards walk home dejected and in silence from the square.

Summer sees Shad whisked off to sea by Dad again, the both of them having disappeared while Ray was at school, leaving just him and Mom alone in the shack. She talks to him a lot, or at least, at him, but Ray rarely answers. Home becomes nothing more than a place to sleep at night when he can’t sleepover at someone else’s house, and he even goes out of his way to offer to baby sit the neighbour’s kids as an excuse to get out of the house more, when Jonah isn’t allowed out to play and Keeli is at work. Mostly Betta and Pollock take up his offer, thankful for another set of hands to keep their four daughters in line, especially since Betta is expecting another child or two any day, and with those four comes Rasbora and occasionally Tali too, although he still doesn’t talk to Ray, seeming to prefer his own company even when hanging out with the other children. He’s not old enough or strong enough of a swimmer to take the six of them down to the ocean, but they don’t seem to mind that too much. Except for Tali, who kept trying to run off to swim anyway.

Nearly everyday Ray would have to go running off after him, dragging him back away from the water while Tali struggled to break free. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could just get the kid to bleeding tell him why he kept running off, but Tali still doesn’t speak to him, and even when Ray tries to sign him the question instead, to try and tempt Tali to sign back, he closes his eyes on Ray and turns away instead. Ray finds himself having to take deep breaths and slowly count back from ten to stop himself from just straight up yelling at the kid. Was he that bad when he was a child?!

At least the girls seem to behave themselves for the most part. Amber and Agnartha are too young to cause much issues, except when they play too rough, and when one starts crying the other one does too, to Ray’s frustrations. Elly and Hali play nice at least, even if he does have to chase after them to stop them from hugging and talking to strangers every five minutes. At least Rasbora never causes him an issue, often trying to help Ray to keep Tali from running to his death in the ocean. She babbles at length though, telling Ray over and over again how excited she was for her new baby sibling to arrive.

When Shad and Dad shore up again, Ray greets Shad with a big hug, before lodging his complaints with Danio. “Your son is awful. Why does he keep trying to drown himself in the ocean every five minutes?”

It makes Danio laugh, at least, a loud, snorting laugh that could be heard through the dockyards, summoning little Tali like a distress beacon to his arms. “Tali’s a really good swimmer, and more confident than his mother. I think he just misses going swimming when I’m at sea. Sorry for the distress, Ray, but just think of it as payback for you and Shad messing with me when I used to babysit you. What goes around comes around.”

“We never ran off to the sea,” Ray corrected him. “We weren’t suicidal.”

“No, you just used to hide one of you and pretend there was only ever the one of you,” Danio corrected him, messing up Ray’s hair. “Don’t ever think you were a bleeding angel, kid.”

“Come on,” Dad reached for Ray’s shoulder, and Ray quickly threw off his hand, watching the hurt look on Dad’s face. “Let’s head home, tea should be ready soon.”

“Actually,” Danio interrupted, “I was hoping to speak to Ray in private, I’ll only need him for a few minutes. Just about the ship and stuff, you know. Since he still needs to pass his tests to become an apprentice.”

Dad frowns and Shad clings to Ray’s arm, but the look on Danio’s face tells Ray that he really should accept, so he shakes Shad off. “I won’t be long, Shad. Go take a nap so we can play together later, okay?”

“Okay…” Shad agreed glumly, Dad reaching to take his hand, only for Shad to pull his hand away. Dad didn’t push it. Danio planted a kiss on Tali’s cheek, before turning to Nangra.

“Tali, buddy, why don’t you go home with Papaw? I’ll meet you there,” Danio offered, but Tali gave whines of disapproval, clinging to him tighter. “Kiddo, come on, it’ll just be a few minutes, Pa’s gotta work.”

“Come on, swabby,” Nangra insisted, reaching out to take Tali. “Why don’t we go get changed and head to the beach? Sounds like you’ve been dying for a swim; me too. Pa will meet us up soon, I promise.”

Tali didn’t seem overly pleased, but he did let Nangra take him into his arms, to which Nangra quickly started to throw him into the air, to Tali’s pleased squeals and Danio’s half formed protests as they quickly disappeared back towards their house. “Man, I know he raised four kids but the way he throws Tali around just makes me panic. You’d think he’d be more gentle.”

“I suppose he knows what he’s doing,” Ray offered with a shrug, to which Danio laughed.

“Yeah, I hope so. But I can’t help but remember he raised four but only I made it to adulthood…” Danio muttered, shaking his head. “Anyway, back on track. How is it going at home, kid? Everything… okay?”

“Yeah,” Ray lied with a shrug. Danio didn’t seem convinced.

“No… falling out with your parents or anything? Or Shad falling out with them?” He pushed, and Ray just shrugged again. “Only, Shad and Wobbe weren’t exactly chummy on that last trip. Don’t get me wrong, they worked together as well as any other crewmates, but Shad would not talk to Wobbe for any reason other than work, and he refused to sleep in his hammock like most apprentices would. He insisted on sleeping on the floor until I offered him a place in my hammock instead. That’s not like him.”

“You’d have to ask Shad,” Ray shrugged. “We’re twins, but I can’t read his mind, you know. I don’t know if or why he’s fallen out with Dad.”

“Hmm. You know, I’d buy that, if the two of you were ever at home during the Games this year, but you haven’t been. Things a bit frosty at home?” Danio pushed. When Ray still didn’t talk, Danio continued. “I need to know, Ray. If it might affect the work on the ship, I need to know. I could ask Pa to talk to you instead?”

Talking like this with Danio wasn’t as bad as talking like this with Nangra: Danio was nowhere near as scary as him. Nangra was big, one of the biggest men down the docks, and his face always looked angry when he wasn’t going out of his way to not look scary, while Danio looked more like his mother, and his permanently squinted right eye took away a lot of the intimidation of his height. Ray would always rather talk to Danio than Nangra.

“I had a falling out with our parents. Shad’s just taken my side,” Ray admitted.

“Falling out over what?” Danio asked, and Ray swallowed.

“Over the reaping,” Ray explained. “Mom and Dad want me to volunteer if Shad is reaped.”

For a long moment, Danio doesn’t seem to react, just blinking, dumbfounded. “What?”

“If Shad is reaped, they want me to volunteer in his place. ‘Cos I’m going to the Academy and can fight and Shad can’t. And- and I might have understood if we were older, but no-one wins the Games when they’re twelve. They just want me to die in his place,” Ray explained, feeling that same awful gnawing of tears building up in his chest again, made all the worse when Danio pulls him into a hug.

“That is bullshit,” Danio hissed. “Telling you to volunteer? Who the hell would put that kind of pressure on their own damned kid?!”

“Mom and Dad, apparently,” Ray offered, before the sobs really started and Danio squeezed him tight. “They- they said that’s why I was sent to the Academy. So Shad would live. And- and- I bet that’s why Dad won’t take me on the boat. He’d rather I was dead!”

Danio hissed loudly, giving Ray another squeeze before kneeling in front of him, gripping his arms tight. “Now you listen to me, and you listen to me good, Ray. No matter what your parents want, I don’t want you dead. I don’t prefer one of you over the other, even if I see Shad more. You’re both kind, and sweet, and hilarious, and absolutely bloody brilliant. Fuck your parents. No-body else in this whole district would prefer one of you dead over the other, you’re funnier as a pair than apart.”

“Mom and Dad didn’t even want me,” Ray whimpered out. “They- they were only expecting one kid. That’s why Shad got named after Dad’s first catch. I- I’m just a spare. Like the orphans the rich people buy to volunteer for their kids in the reaping.”

“I don’t care what they did or didn’t expect,” Danio insisted. “It’s wrong, they’re wrong, to put this pressure on you. A child is a damned gift you should be grateful for, no matter if you expected them or not. They should bleeding well treat you better. You deserve better.”

The sobs are picking up too much again, and Ray holds his arms out for another hug, grateful that Danio doesn’t even question it, squeezing him tight, the first time an adult had comforted him since his parents declared they would rather Ray was dead than Shad, and Ray couldn’t help but wish he’d been born into Danio’s family instead.

Chapter Text

“I’m going to be home late on Wednesday’s from now on,” Ray declared after dinner the first day back at school. Dad and Shad had only shored up yesterday and were still obviously exhausted from the fishing trip, while Ray had meandered at the school gates for a while after school finished for once, seeing him get home nearly an hour later than usual. Not that he cared: an extra hour away from his parents was appreciated.

“...Okay,” Dad agreed. “Care to explain why? You weren’t exactly on time today, either.”

“I’m joining the school choir,” Ray declared, to which Shad snorted, trying to cover over the sound, while Mom and Dad looked confused. “What? I like singing. I’m always singing on the boats, but since I’m not allowed out on it anymore, I guess I should go sing elsewhere, right?”

“Well, sure, but a choir isn’t like singing on the boats, Ray,” Mom insisted. “You mess up a song on the boats they just laugh it off, you mess up in a choir and it throws off the whole piece.”

“I won’t mess up,” Ray shrugged. “The music teacher asked me to join. Said I’m really good for someone who’s never sung in a choir before.”

“You’re gonna be like Danio,” Shad teased. “He’s always singing too.”

Maybe there was a little more to that statement than Shad realised, but Ray just scoffed. “Well, if I can’t be a fisherman like Dad, I might as well go be a singer like Danio instead. It would be nice to have an adult to talk to about a shared interest for once.”

There’s a general wince from both his parents, but Ray doesn’t care. They were only getting what they deserved.

“So I’m going to see you even less,” Shad complained, which did make Ray feel just that little bit more guilty, but he’d already made his mind up. He wanted to learn to sing properly; he wanted an excuse to stay out of the house as much as possible. Shad could just go play with his friends instead.

“Only for like an hour out of the week, Shad. You’ll be at sea more than I’ll be at choir,” Ray reminded him.

No-one argued further, so Ray joined the school choir, which met up on after school on Wednesdays, learning and practicing various songs from the District. Rarely a proper shanty, although the music teacher did have a book of them that he let Ray read through after choir practice was finished. He recognised some of the ones Danio used to teach him on the boat, like ‘Old Billy Riley’ or ‘Barrett’s Privateers’, but there were countless ones Ray had never even heard of before, writing down the names for his own interest. When he questioned Danio about them, he admitted there were some even he hadn’t heard of.

That intrigued Ray even more than the songs he did recognise, and he would often find himself travelling into town when Shad was at sea to visit the library and find some more song books for shanties, trying to learn them by rote and copying down the more complex ones so he could practice them at home. They were easier to learn and remember than the songs in choir practice, and he was quickly racking up a long list of shanties that he could break out and sing at Shad to annoy him.

The other lessons at school were much the same as the year before; next school year they’d have a chance to start to develop different angles for the interviews, but for this year they had to continue on with the same old ‘scared or sweet’ angles. Jonah said it was weird that Ray hated interview practice so much and yet was going out of his way to sing in front of people, but Ray didn’t think it was quite so weird. The music teacher was a lot nicer than the interview teachers were, he never forced Ray to get up in front of everyone if he didn’t want to.

Keeli wasn’t allowed to join the after school clubs; she was expected to work, but she assured Ray it wasn’t all bad. Miss Sennit had, in fact, took her on as a full apprentice, and was teaching Keeli how to sculpt glass in her workshop. Keeli bragged that she apparently had an ‘in-born talent’ for glass blowing and cutting, to which Ray teased her by saying they all knew she had big lungs with how much she talked. The apprenticeship saw Keeli making money beyond what was paid to the orphanage, and Miss Sennit was apparently keen on keeping her for as long as possible, which Jonah suggested might mean she was looking to have Keeli take over the shop, since Miss Sennit was sixty and had no living children of her own to take it over when she died.

Jonah, too, wasn’t allowed to join after school clubs for his own apprenticeship in his mother’s shop; she was a demanding teacher, with praise for Jonah’s skills being a lot less common than what Keeli got, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good. He had great fine control and would sometimes show Ray the skills he was learning at lunch time, having snuck some of the metal clasps out of the shop and showing Ray how to set rings using stones from the playground. Ray couldn’t see the appeal of jewellery still, but Jonah didn’t need to know that, and Ray made sure Jonah knew just how clever and skilled he was whenever he showed him something.

“You should show me some of the knots you tie on the boats sometime,” Jonah insisted. “Bet you’re as good with them as I am with Mommy’s tools.”

“Shad’s better,” Ray shrugged. “And I’m not practicing them anymore, remember? Dad doesn’t take me out on the boat.”

“Aw. I wanted to learn some of them, so I don’t look like a complete idiot when Daddy takes me on the boat in a few years time.”

“You’ll look like an idiot either way, and they won’t trust you to tie any of the knots, Jonah,” Ray scoffed. “Just like how your Mom doesn’t trust you with expensive gemstones yet. You tie a knot wrong, and you could lose the entire sail.”

Zabra is allowed to join the afterschool clubs, but she doesn’t take up singing like Ray, instead taking up dancing instead. They don’t really dance much down the dockyards, Ray can’t understand the appeal much, but he does understand the appreciation of the music, at least. Shad’s school has very few after school clubs, but Shad joins one anyway, since it means he’s also late home on a Wednesday. Predictably for his brother, its a fishing club, but it does mean Shad is allowed to go pole fishing in the ocean at least once a week without running the risk of being arrested. He even excitedly tells Ray that they’re planning a club trip to go fishing at one of the inland rivers one day, expressing his hope to catch his own namesake fish.

In early November, after a long day of school, Ray finds himself walking towards the town with Jonah, Keeli and Zabra once more. Shad was at sea, as usual, so there was very little need to rush home, and Jonah had wanted to take the three of them to the sweet shop, to which Ray had agreed to tag along, for the company more than anything else.

“You and your sweet tooth, Jonah,” Ray teased. “You’ll get cavities, and then you’ll need all your teeth pulling. Tell me when you get booked in with the dentist, I want to watch.”

“Pulling? No, you just get a filling, Ray. Daddy says I’ve got his teeth and sweet tooth, and he’s never gotten a filling, so I’m safe,” Jonah explained. “What, do they just pull teeth at your home?”

“Yeah? It’s cheaper and quicker to just have them pulled. I can’t imagine how much it’d hurt to have a filling placed, Aki said they have to drill the tooth first.”

“They give you pain relief, Ray, what century do you live in?” Jonah scoffed.

“Yeah, and that costs too. Cheaper to just have the tooth pulled,” Ray insisted. “We’re not all rich like you and Zabra.”

“Absolutely bonkers justification,” Jonah shook his head. “You only get one set of adult teeth. Why pull them out?”

“Stops them hurting,” Ray shrugged.

“You’d be hard pressed to convince the orphanage owners to let you even get a tooth pulled,” Keeli added. “Clew got a really bad infection in one of his teeth last year, he was practically screaming with pain all day before they finally took him to the dentist. Dunnage said you could see the pus streaming out of his mouth-”

“Eww? Keeli, shut up!” Zabra demanded as Keeli burst out laughing. A hand touched Ray’s arm, making him jump slightly in surprise, turning to see who was grabbing his attention, and almost yelling in shock. Shad? He was meant to be at sea! But here he was, in all his glory, a cheeky smile across his face, and Ray immediately cottoned on, removing his blazer and handing it to Shad, who put it on, taking Ray’s place among his friends as Ray followed on behind, fighting back his giggles.

“What? It’s just a bit of pus, Zabra. Worse things happen at sea, you know,” Keeli teased.

“Stop it, it’s gross!” Zabra instructed. “Jonah, Ray, make her shut up!”

Jonah smirked, turning to Shad, who gave a whole hearted laugh. “Stop being such a wuss, Zabra. It’s just a story, wasn’t even graphic.”

Zabra loudly huffed, crossing her arms across her chest while Jonah laughed again. Ray had to give it to Shad, he’d really improved on his enunciation, and man did he pick up on the conversation quick. None of the others even suspected they’d swapped places, although, then again, why would they even think Shad would meet them here, just to trick them?

“On to better topics and away from infected teeth,” Jonah insisted. “What’s everyone getting from the sweet shop? My treat.”

“You do spoil us, Jonah,” Keeli teased. “Do they have the cinder toffee again? That was great last time.”

“I think so, but I didn’t check. Zabra?”

“I think I’m with Keeli,” Zabra shrugged. “It’s too good to miss out on if they’re selling it.”

“And Ray?” Jonah asked, to which Shad scrunched up his face. Oh shit. Shad did not know a single sweet in the shop by name, unlike Ray. He only knew them by taste.

“I’m not a fan of sweets,” Shad insisted. “Do they sell anything without sugar? Anything at all?”

“Sure they do,” Jonah insisted, elbowing Shad hard. “They sell paper bags! Come on, Ray. You’re always such a stick in the mud when it comes to fun.”

“Am not,” Shad refuted with a huff. “You just don’t have the right kind of fun.”

Something about the statement seems to catch something in Keeli, as her face screws up, glancing behind her to see Ray. He raises a finger to his lips, watches as Keeli’s entire face lights up with surprise and joy, before she turns back to the rest of them, Ray picking up his speed to walk beside her.

“What about dark chocolate, then? That’s what boring adults eat when they’re pushed to eat sweets,” Zabra offered.

“Are you trying to suggest I’m boring?” Shad asked with mock offense, to which Zabra scoffed.

“Are you saying you’re not? If we didn’t force you to talk about other things you’d only ever talk about

fishing or singing, Ray. You’re the most boring person I know.”

“You’re hardly one to talk,” Shad insisted. “I’ll just have to see what’s least gross in the shop when we get there. Maybe they’ll have a change of heart and sell fish today.”

“I’m going to find a sweet you enjoy, Ray, I promise you that. There’s got to be something for everyone, you just need to find the right sweet,” Jonah insisted.

“Don’t bother, Jonah, no style, no money, no taste,” Zabra teased, turning to Keeli. “Don’t you-” Zabra paused, stopping dead in her tracks, as everyone stopped and turned to her. “Why are there two Rays?”

Jonah frowned as Keeli tried to stifle a laugh, turning to look at Shad, who leant forward to look at Ray. Jonah turned to look at Ray, his face screwing up in confusion, as Ray and Shad burst out laughing, stepping out and wrapping their arms around each other.

“Allow me to introduce you all to my brother, Shad,” Shad declared, waving towards Ray, who shook his head.

“No, allow ME to introduce you to MY brother, Shad,” Ray insisted, watching as Jonah and Zabra looked between them both with desperate looks, trying to figure them out from each other, all while Keeli snorted with laughter.

“Don’t believe a single word he says,” Shad insisted. “Shad’s known for lying.”

“Well, he’s right about that,” Ray added.

“Wh-” Jonah started, pausing and shaking his head. “What? How are we meant to tell you two apart?”

“Easy,” Ray shrugged.

“He’s the ugly one,” Shad pointed towards Ray, who slapped his hand away.

“No way, you’re the ugly one,” Ray answered, to which Shad wrapped an arm around his neck, dragging him down in a headlock as Ray faked being trapped, long enough to give the illusion he could be either one of them, trained or untrained.

“You’re identical, you’re both the ugly one!” Zabra insisted. “Keeli, clear this up.”

“No way,” Keeli laughed. “It’s much more fun this way.”

“I think…” Jonah ventured, pointing towards Shad, “I think that’s Shad. Because swapping a blazer is easy, but swapping shoes and trousers quickly isn’t.”

They both looked down at their legs, Ray still in his smart school shoes and trousers, and Shad in his more tatty fishing gear, before turning to each other and shrugging.

“Easy to fix, Ray,” Shad assured him. “We’ll just find an alleyway and we’ll keep them guessing again.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Ray agreed, before turning back to his friends. “So, let me start again. Everyone, this is Shad. Shad, this is-”

“Zabra, the mean one,” Shad recited, pointing towards Zabra, who frowned, “Keeli, who I already know, and Jonah, the only other guy and the person who keeps trying to buy you sweets despite the fact you hate them, just because he’s so nice. Right?”

“Got it in one,” Ray agreed.

“Mean one, huh?” Zabra asked with a huff. “Well, it’s nice to finally put a face to the name of the boy who has a crush on Twait’s little sister.”

Shad’s cheeks flushed red as he crossed his arms on his chest. “I do not! I have not got a crush on her! I’ve never had a crush on her! She’s just pretty!”

“Even covered in fish guts and smelling of death, she’s pretty?” Zabra scoffed.

“Lots of people smell of fish guts down the dockyards, doesn’t mean she’s not pretty,” Shad insisted. “’Sides, we’re friends now, so can you stop telling people I have a crush on her?” Shad demanded, elbowing Ray full force in his ribs, while Ray shoved him back. “It’s embarassing. She’s gonna hear it one day and it’s gonna be so awkward.”

“If it embarrasses you, all the better,” Ray teased, to which Shad scowled.

“Did you three know that Ray used to-” Shad started, to which Ray grabbed him around the neck in a headlock, trying to stop the words before they came. “Have- a crush- on-” Shad elbowed Ray as hard as he could in the gut, and Ray doubled over, trying to catch his breath back as Shad broke free. “Used to have a crush on Keeli’s mom?”

Keeli snorted loudly as Ray shoved him away. “Did not!”

“For the love of- are you two always like this when you’re together?” Zabra asked. “You live together, you’d think this was the first time you’d seen each other in years.”

“He has been at sea for two weeks, I see more of you three than I do of Shad nowadays,” Ray insisted, which was, sadly and increasingly, true. The Salty Cairn would often spend two or three weeks at sea, then a whole week back in port, only occasionally getting longer stays on land, usually around major celebrations in crewmates families or the Hunger Games. Shad wasn’t going off on every trip like Dad did, but he was on nearly as many trips as he missed. “Speaking of, you’re not meant to get back to shore for another few days, what are you doing here?”

“Sea Dragon ran into trouble, we went out to help pull them back into port, so the trip was cut a little short. Pay was lower than usual, but no-one died, so everyone’s still pretty happy about it all,” Shad explained. “And, Danio actually gave me my pay this time, rather than Dad. Said I worked for it and I should spend it on ‘whatever I damn well please’. Dad wasn’t too happy, but when I told Danio I’d use it to come trick your friends, he thought it was a great idea and argued the case with Dad so I could get the tram and meet you here.”

“Well, its nice to finally meet you, Shad. Ray talks about you all the time, weird to think we’re only just meeting now,” Jonah said, to which Shad gave him a bright smile, holding out his hand to shake Jonah’s.

“Nice to meet you too, Jonah. He talks about you non-stop too. We never really had different friends to each other before Ray met you guys, so it feels weird to me too. Like I should already be friends with you all.”

“Well, lets get started out on the right foot,” Jonah offered. “We’re going to the sweet shop, do you want to come?”

Shad cringed a little, before laughing. “See, me and Ray, we’re practically the same person. So I don’t like sweets, either. No-one in our family does.”

“Great! Then you can share one bag of sweets between you and I can save my pocket money for later.”

Shad accompanies them to the sweet shop, chatting with Jonah all the way, as Jonah asks him as much about the boat as possible, trying to recall all the names of their neighbours that Ray had taught him over the years. He’s surprisingly good at it, and him and Shad are quickly talking like they’d known each other for years.

At the sweet shop Keeli steals Shad away to talk him through all the sweets, which Shad had tried a few of, smuggled away by Ray, but never seen in all their glory, lined up on the shelves in little glass jars while the strong smell of menthol from the cough sweets being made next door swam through the little shop. Jonah couldn’t hide the grin on his face.

“You know, when you said you and Shad were identical, I never thought you’d mean to that extent,” Jonah explained. “Even your personalities!”

“Drives our parents nuts,” Ray agreed. “Only way to really tell us apart is to get us to show off our fighting or fishing skills; Shad’s the better fisherman, I’m the better fighter.”

“So… is there a way to tell you two apart other than your clothes?” Jonah asked, and Ray shook his head. “Really?”

“Not even with the clothes, we don’t have seperate wardrobes, you know. We just wear each other’s stuff. I know Keeli can tell us apart, but she won’t even tell us how she does it, so we’re none the wiser.”

“And how does Shad feel about the whole, you know, ‘volunteer in his place’ thing?” Jonah asked quietly, to which Ray frowned.

“He hates it more than I do,” Ray admitted. “Which is why I still talk to him but not my parents. Not more than I have to, anyway. Most of our talks devolve into arguments at the moment…”

“Hey!” One of the shop keepers yelled, grabbing Ray and Jonah’s attention to where Shad and Keeli were stood chatting about the sweets, jumping as one of the shopkeepers grabbed Shad’s shoulder. “No vagabonds or window shoppers in the shop. If you’re not buying, get out!”

“What?” Shad asked. “None of us ‘cept the rich boy’s buying, what are you picking on me for?!”

“Think we don’t have enough trouble with your kind prowling around the shop, looking for sweets to steal?” The keeper asked. “Get out, before I call for the peacekeepers.”

“I haven’t done anything!” Shad protested, while Jonah and Ray rushed up to join him.

“He’s with me, Mister Fathom,” Jonah insisted. “Shad won’t do anything, he doesn’t even like sweets.”

“If he doesn’t like them then why is he here?” Mister Fathom asked, shoving Shad, while Shad scowled at him.

“I invited him along, he’s my friend’s brother, he’s never been here before,” Jonah replied. “You let Ray in all the time, Shad’s not going to cause any more problems than Ray does.”

Jonah pointed towards Ray for emphasis, and Mister Fathom looked between the two twins, a scowl filling his face too.

“I know your ‘friend’ was at least taught at your school how to behave himself, but the feral beasts from down the dockyards can’t be trusted in the shop, not with valuables, and not when tourists might be around.”

“Tourist season is over,” Jonah insisted.

“And my brother isn’t ‘feral’,” Ray insisted, stepping up beside Shad, who looked too gobsmacked to answer. “He’s less feral than I am, and if you insult my family again I might just have to show you how much more feral I can be.”

“Threatening me now?” Mister Fathom asked. “And you wonder why we don’t serve your type in here. Get out, now, both of you.”

“Gladly,” Ray replied, grabbing Shad’s arm. “Come on, no point going anywhere we’re not welcome, ‘specially not when they only serve shit sweets, anyway.”

Ray pulled Shad out behind him, exiting through the door and crossing the street to a nearby bench, where Ray collapsed into it, crossing his arms on his chest.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Shad said quietly. “I mean, I know the shopkeepers hate having us in or near their shops, but I thought it was a money thing. I thought they’d be okay if I was in there with your friends, at least.”

“They’re fine with me going in, so long as I’m in my school uniform, but on weekends I have to wait outside,” Ray explained. “Can’t believe he called you feral.”

“Land lubbers,” Shad scoffed. “Rude stuck up bastards, the lot of them.”

The shop door opened again as Keeli walked out, glancing around for them, before jogging to join them. “Jonah’s laying into him, it’s brilliant,” she explained with a grin. “And he’s, like, their number one customer in winter, so they’re shitting their pants right now. I pointed out that technically I must be feral too, and that got Jonah even more worked up.”

She flopped down on the bench between them, wrapping her arms around their necks and pulling them both into a hug. “I’ve missed sitting between you two like this every day. Are you gonna join us more often, Shad?”

“Probably not, if I’m gonna get thrown out of any shops you four want to go in,” Shad tutted.

“You should’ve kept my blazer on, that way we at least look half-dressed each,” Ray offered. “No wonder Aki prefers living in the dockyards to the town, can you imagine how poorly they tret Danio if they’re throwing you out just for standing in a shop?”

The door to the sweet shop opened again as Jonah and Zabra exited, Zabra fighting back her own grin while Jonah was visibly fuming. “I can’t believe he spoke to you two like that!” Jonah insisted. “The nerve of some people!”

“Your mom speaks to us worse,” Ray pointed out. “She chases dockyard kids away from the shop windows, never mind the inside of the shop.”

Jonah’s face flushed slightly as he tried to clear his throat. “Well, yeah, I know, but Mommy sells very expensive things, the sweets are cheap. And I don’t agree with her doing it either.”

“So, no cinder toffee today,” Zabra surmised.

“I am not giving them money when they insulted Ray and Shad like that, are you?” Jonah asked, to which Zabra shrugged.

“Wasn’t giving them money anyway. But I’m not looking forward to dealing with you going through sugar withdrawals just to make your point, Jonah.”

That made Jonah pause, as if he’d entirely forgotten that not buying sweets meant he wouldn’t have sweets, before he waved Ray, Shad and Keeli to get off of the bench. “Fine. We’ll just have to go to the bakery instead. They do sell non-sweet things there for you two, at least.”

“They like us there even less,” Ray warned. “We’ll just wait here, avoid causing another scene.”

“You can’t let them win like that,” Jonah insisted. “Staying out of the shops just because they’re rude. You’ve got as much right as anyone else to go in them.”

“Fine, you go tell them that, we’ll wait here,” Ray insisted. “I’m not putting up with that embarrassment and insult again just to prove a point.”

Jonah looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead just deflated, summoning Keeli and Zabra to follow him as he headed a little further down the street to the bakery. Shad sidled up next to Ray.

“You don’t have to stay out here with me, you know. You can go hang out with your friends. Sorry for causing problems,” Shad apologised, to which Ray shook his head.

“You’re not causing any problems,” Ray insisted. “Jonah’s just not used to the idea that town people aren’t all nice and welcoming, only to him ‘cos he’s one of them. You should hear him talk about how scary our neighbours are.”

“Still. You wouldn’t have this issue if I’d just stayed at home, would you? If Jonah’s surprised, then they must always let you into the shops.”

“Only because they didn’t realise what I am.”

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, watching as Jonah disappeared into the bakery. “Remember the story Mom told us about how the bakery turned down Nangra’s business that one time?”

“How can I forget? They got him arrested for walking into the shop. It’s a good thing the peacekeeper had a bit more sense than they usually do, or he’d have been in serious trouble. Just ‘cos he’s big.”

“He’s looking less and less big by the day though,” Shad admitted. “Don’t know if he’s just getting old, or I’m getting tall, but he doesn’t look as tall as he used to.”

“I know what you mean, but I didn’t want to say it in case I was wrong.”

“...Does Jonah always call his mom ‘Mommy’?” Shad asked, turning to Ray with a look of disbelief. “What is he, three?”

“Always,” Ray admitted. “It’s a bit weird, but last time I brought it up he got upset, so I don’t. If he wants to sound like a little kid then he can, I guess.”

When Jonah returns, he has a little tray of cupcakes, handing them out between the friends, before handing Ray a small bag with two sausage rolls in, which Ray hands one to Shad, before eating the other himself. It’s absolutely delicious, much better than the sweets, still warm from the oven, and Ray can’t hold back his laugh as Shad moans in delight at the flavour of it.

They hung out for a couple of hours before all having to head home, with Ray and Shad returning home late that night, two hours late in fact, receiving an ear full each from their parents. But Ray just zones out of the scolding, no longer caring for what it was his parents had to say.

The arguments are more and more common, just as he’d told Jonah. Before he’d been willing to apologise and back down when his parents tell him off, but they’d already made it clear that they cared little for him surviving to adulthood, so what was the point of playing nice with them? He’d answer back, argue his case, even walk out of the house entirely to disappear to the beach if he’d had enough of them, ignoring their shouts and demands that he come back home. They still tried to talk to him when he wasn’t in trouble, but Ray found increasingly that he’d only answer them when they were arguing, and quickly it became its own self-fullfilling prophecy, that they’d only speak when they were arguing, and arguments became the main communication in the house. More often than not Ray and Shad would spend as much time outside of the house as possible, swimming, fishing, doing anything that meant they didn’t have to return home to either stony silence or an argument.

“Ray, please, just talk to us!” Mom implored one day, when Ray had refused to speak at all during dinner, no matter what they asked about. “I don’t want this to be our relationship, please, I love you. We both love you, please talk to us.”

“And I don’t want my relationship with Shad to be tainted by knowing you two want me dead over him, but I never got a choice in that, did I?” Ray asked, to which Mom flinched.

“Ray, that’s not it at all…”

“Really? Then care to explain how else I should have taken your request to volunteer in his place if he gets reaped?”

They never had a response to that. They never had a clever remark, or even a stupid one. There was no other way to take it than what he did, and the proof was in how all their neighbours reacted to it, too. Mom and Dad hated that Ray told everyone else, but why not? It wasn’t just Danio who picked up on the cold relationship they had now, other people asked, and was he just meant to lie to save his parents’ face?

The reactions around the community were generally in Ray and Shad’s favour too. Stone and Johnny’s parents seemed to take the brunt of the falling out, since they now were the only parents of thirteen year olds in the community who would talk to their children without someone breaking out into tears or shouting matches, and as such they often found themselves with three children that weren’t their own sleeping on their shack floors. At least, now that Johnny was nearly nineteen years old, he was working full time and getting a full crew pay, but Ray spotted once or twice that Mom would hand fish over to Stone’s dad without taking anything in exchange, trying to keep her boys fed, even if they avoided home.

Candiru’s parents never spoke to them. They hadn’t spoken in years, not since Altum had died, but when you passed by her house you could hear them yelling at each other the way Ray and Shad yelled at their parents, except that Candiru’s Dad was often slurring as he yelled, as if he was perpetually drunk. Candiru never wanted to talk about home. Only Stone’s home was welcoming anymore.

Their other neighbours took their side, even if they barely knew them. He’d overheard Pollock and Betta complaining about their parents when they had passed by once, with Betta noting that it was ‘no wonder the Odair twins are never home. I wouldn’t be, either’. With her newborn daughter (not a twin, for once, to Pollock’s delight) and Gobi expecting a second child, they seemed to take the idea that their child would ever have to volunteer in place of another one particularly harsh. Pollock most of all. He even asked Ray for advice on how to make it clear to Hali that, should Elly or her younger sisters ever be reaped, she was absolutely under no circumstances to ever volunteer.

When Ray felt like he needed adult advice, he’d turn to Danio or Aki instead, or failing that Nangra. Nangra seemed to be one of the few people to consider Mom and Dad’s decision to be ‘bad but understandable’, although he never faulted Ray and Shad for falling out with his parents. “Be mad at them all you want, kids, I know I would be in your position,” Nangra explained. “But know they’re just trying to do what they think is best for you as a collective. It sucks, and it’s wrong, yes, but they’re trying their best. Barely anyone in the dockyards manages to get all their children to adulthood, they’re just trying their best to make sure one of them makes it.”

“Why? Would you have picked out Danio to make it to adulthood out of your four kids if you were given a choice?” Ray demanded, watching Nangra flinch, pain written clearly across his face.

“We all want all our kids to reach adulthood, but if I was given the choice to ensure at least one kid made it, or risk losing them all, I know what I would have chosen,” Nangra explained.

Danio and Aki never took Mom and Dad’s side, Shad reported that Danio wasn’t afraid to call Dad out on his bullshit during fishing trips, either, when something happened and Shad and Dad got into an argument at sea again. It didn’t happen often, at least. Shad tried to avoid Dad, and if Dad didn’t get the hint, Danio would ensure he had jobs at the far side of the boat to work on instead to keep them apart. And while Danio never outright called their parents out on their decision to their face, Aki wasn’t quite so forgiving.

“Heard you’d traded Tali’s baby clothes to Steeve and Gobi,” Mom had mentioned when Aki had popped around with a basket of tubers to trade for some fish one evening while Ray was polishing their fishing trident. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine, Danio and I just had a good talk and we’ve decided we’re not going to have another child any time soon,” Aki explained. “We weren’t actively trying before, we just… weren’t actively trying to not have one, you know?”

“Ah, well, not actively not trying is how we ended up with our two,” Mom agreed, shooting a smile Ray’s way, which he didn’t return.

“Mmm. We’d love another, of course. A full house would be wonderful, but Danio’s worried about it being a little boy, and that Tali might feel pressured to volunteer in his place if he was ever reaped, and Danio does not want that whatsoever. So we’re not going to try again until there’s enough of an age gap that we take the choice away from Tali. Can’t think of where Danio gets that fear from,” Aki explained, her tone harsh and cold, and Mom flinched away from it.

As winter grips the District, bad weather keeps the boats in the port, and Ray finds himself dragged by Shad down to the warehouses to play with Allis when her work day finishes early. She’s a strange friend for Shad to have, all things considered, so quiet, sad and proper, but she’s nice at least, and its easy to make her laugh by telling her stories of what he brother does during training sessions, especially when Ray describes managing to beat him in sparring matches.

“Your brother’s terrible, Allis,” Ray joked. “I’m not surprised Tali, Elly, Hali, Raz and Angel managed to drown him at the party.”

“Five against one is known for being very fair odds, of course,” Allis joked back.

“It is against a fifteen year old,” Shad insisted.

“He came into school the other day with a black eye, but no-one would tell us why he had one,” Ray said off-handedly, to which Allis hissed through her teeth. “What happened?”

“He didn’t do anything,” Allis insisted. “He said he wasn’t feeling good and wouldn’t get out of bed, so one of the orphanage workers dragged him out of it, tried to get him to go to his job. When Twait returned to his bed, they hit him. They don’t usually hit hard enough to bruise…”

“What, the orphanage workers hit you?” Shad asked, to which Allis nodded glumly. “That’s not right. You’re not meant to hit anyone, but especially not children. What are they doing hitting you guys for?”

“They said its to teach us to not be naughty, but my Mom and Dad never hit us, and Twait was always better behaved for them,” Allis answered, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Twait said I just have to wait another two years, for him to graduate from the Academy, then he’ll be old enough and be able to get a good enough job to be my legal guardian and we won’t have to live at the orphanage any more.”

“Well, until then, you can just spend as much time down here with us. They can’t hit you if you’re not there,” Shad assured her, to which Allis shook her head.

“If you stay out when you’re not meant to, you get punished. If you travel too far from the orphanage, you get punished. Only reason I can spend time with you today is because the work dried up early and they won’t know.”

“That’s awful,” Shad whispered, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug.

“Is Twait feeling better now?” Ray asked, to which Allis shrugged.

“He’s sort of up and down at the minute. Some days he’s fine, other days he’s just really not himself, not getting out of bed, not really talking, not smiling…”

“Twait smiles?” Ray asked. “I’ve never seen him smile, not once.”

“He smiles a lot at me, but not when he’s unwell. The orphanage workers say he’s just going through a teenage moodswing, but I know he’s not well. His friends agree, too. I tried asking the apothecary for help, but he didn’t have any advice.”

Ray and Shad both cringed; the apothecary was a somewhat common sight down the dockyards, especially when a boat came in flying a distress flag. He had a bad reputation for being as stuck up as all the other townfolk, and especially mean towards the dockyard people. They had to take anyone who was whipped to him for help, and he’d yell at anyone who cried from the pain ‘too much’. Nangra said he would call the peacekeepers on anyone who brought in a child suffering from malnutrition too, regardless of the cause. Down the dockyards, it was mostly from starvation when the storms kept the boats on shore, and no-one could afford food to eat, or if a kid refused to eat their fruit while at sea, as had happened to Danio when he was ten, hiding the fruit to avoid eating it. Neither was their parent’s fault, but they risked arrest instead of help any time they went to see him.

“Maybe he is just having moodswings. Hopefully he’ll get better soon. He was quite good fun at the party,” Shad said. “Is he going to move you down here when he’s old enough to care for you by himself? Cheapest rent in the District, you know.”

“Dunno. We both, and all his friends, come from in-land, so the dockyards are new and scary. But I’ll suggest it to him, since people are so nice down here.”

“’Course we’re nice. We’ve got nothing else going for us but our niceness,” Shad joked, to which Allis gave him a smile, unwrapping her arms from around her knees and shrugging Shad’s arm off from around her shoulders.

“Thanks for inviting us around to the party after the reaping, by the way,” Allis said, a small smile on her face. “It was really fun.”

“We throw one after every reaping, so long as its not a dockyard kid in the Arena,” Shad explained. “I’m sure you’ll get invited along this year too.”

Allis shuddered, and Ray was pretty sure he knew why: no-one wanted to think about the Reaping just yet. It was only January, but that meant it was barely six months away. The Victory Tour for the most recent Victor was going to be starting soon to really drive it home, too. Ray knocked into her with his shoulder.

“Nangra’s fish makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it, though?”

“The fish was really nice,” Allis agreed quietly. “The men who were cooking it were really scary, though.”

“Nangra and Danio?” Ray asked with a laugh, to which Allis flinched away. “They’re not scary, not at all. They just look a bit intimidating.”

“You should see Danio’s son, he looks just like Nangra but little, complete with the constantly angry-looking face, its hilarious,” Shad offered. “It’s hard to be scared of Nangra when you see Tali and realise Nangra looked just like him at one point, all chubby faced and pouty.”

“I saw him trying to drown my brother,” Allis pointed out. “Doesn’t make them any less scary.”

“You’re only ever scared of strangers, come on, lets go see them,” Ray offered, standing to his feet and offering Allis a hand up, which she didn’t take. “You can thank them for the fish and they’ll show you they’re not scary at all.”

They pop around Nangra’s house, but there’s no-one there at all, but one of the neighbours suggested that Danio had taken Tali down to the beach, and at the least they’re quite easy to spot down there, sat side by side on the sand, not seeming to talk much, just sitting, watching the waves. Shad waves for Ray and Allis to hang back, before sneaking along the sand, pouncing on Tali as he finally gets near with a loud “BOO!”

Tali just fixes him with a harsh glare.

“Afternoon Shad,” Danio greeted. “Can we help?”

“Hey, you got it right!” Shad exclaimed as Ray and Allis caught them up. “Finally!”

“Ray’s better at sneaking,” Danio pointed out. “We heard you coming a mile away.”

“Just trying to get a reaction from your kid, Danio. Still haven’t heard him talk,” Shad explained, to which Danio grinned, shaking his head.

“Tali only talks to important and cool people, don’t you, buddy?” Danio asked, wrapping an arm around Tali’s shoulders and pulling him in tight for a hug. “So never to an Odair.”

“So where does his lack of humour come from, anyway?” Shad asked. “’Cos you’ve got a good sense of humour, but he never laughs.” Tali turned to Danio and signed something, to which Danio laughed.

“Tali has an amazing sense of humour,” Danio insisted with a grin. “He says you’re just not funny.”

“I refuse to stand here and be insulted by a five year old,” Shad declared with a gasp, while Danio grabbed him and dragged him down to the floor.

“So sit here and be insulted instead,” Danio suggested. “But really, what can I help you two with? Oh,” He said, suddenly spying Allis, who shifted slightly to stand behind Ray while Danio gave her a smile. “This is your new friend, right? One of the fish cutters?”

“This is Allis,” Shad waved her over. “She never got to thank you for feeding her and her brother at the post reaping party.”

“Ah, it’s my pleasure, really,” Danio assured her. “What’s the point in having your own boat if you can’t use it to feed your neighbours and the local orphans, anyway?”

“Danio’s really soft,” Shad explained to Allis. “He’s worse around Aki.”

“My turn for the ‘introduce via insulting them’, is it? Pollock was complaining about you doing that the other day,” Danio scoffed. “I’ve been called worse things.”

Tali slowly raised his hand without a word, and Danio grinned, looking down at his watch. “Hey, not bad kiddo! Four minutes! That’s twice what I could hold my breath for at your age!”

“You’re having a breath holding competition?” Allis asked, but Danio shook his head.

“Family secret. We free dive, gotta train the kids early to get the best dive times. We practice swimming in summer and holding our breath in Winter, don’t we, Tali?”

“How long can you dive for again, Danio?” Ray asked.

“Uh, think my record is fifteen minutes, but I usually only do about seven, I can push for a ten minute time but it takes me a while to recover.”

“Don’t you drown?” Allis asked, to which Danio laughed.

“Nah, you just gotta train your body to slow everything down. Easier than snorkelling, in my opinion.”

“Danio’s a right chatterbox so Dad says he’s got a massive set of lungs on him, hence why he can hold his breath so long,” Shad explained, to which Danio snorted with laughter.

“Last step before a long dive is to empty your lungs, actually,” Danio insisted.

“He also sings, like Ray. ‘Cept Danio’s nicer to listen to sing,” Shad explained, to which Ray shoved him. “What? It’s true.”

“I didn’t know fishermen would sing,” Allis stated. “You all always look so… serious. Too serious to sing.”

“We sing shanties mostly, but people like to sing. We don’t dance, ‘cos that’s distracting from work, but we do sing,” Ray explained. “Danio wanted to be a singer and not a fisherman anyway, didn’t you?”

“That was the dream,” Danio admitted. “Then I met Aki, and we were expecting Tali’s older sister, so I had to go get a job that would pay me well enough from the get-go to feed my family. I don’t think it would work out, anyway. You’ve got to be a certain degree of good-looking to get a job with tourists, and I’m not that. And I did try, after we lost Barilla. Tali might have better luck though, if he decides he wants to be a singer.”

“I think he’d have to learn to talk first before he can sing,” Ray insisted.

“Tali can talk, I keep telling you all this, he just doesn’t want to,” Danio insisted. “You talk, don’t you, Tali?” Tali nodded, but didn’t say anything. “See? And he sings already. He sings better than you, Shad.”

“I’ll believe that when I hear it,” Shad snorted, while Danio grinned.

“Fine then,” Danio shrugged, wrapping an arm around Tali’s shoulder, pulling him close. “What do we do with the drunken sailor? What do we do with the drunken sailor? What do we do with the drunken sailor? Early in the morning?”

Danio’s voice was surprisingly low when he sang, much lower than he spoke, and Allis seemed to jump in surprise, which Shad and Ray felt too when the chorus started and Tali opened his mouth to sing.

“Way hey, and up she rises, way hey and up she rises, way hey and up she rises, early in the morning,” Tali sang out, a smile stretching across his and Danio’s faces, proof he could speak. Proof he could sing, and while his voice was a lot higher pitched than Danio’s was, he hit the notes with practiced ease, just like his father.

“Told you,” Danio bragged, squeezing Tali tight to him. “He doesn’t have to speak if he doesn’t want to, that’s what he’s got two parents and a papaw for, right?”

“Well, thank you for the fish,” Allis said, Danio looking around in surprise as if forgetting that that was why she was here at all. “Twait would say thank you too, but he can’t come down the docks.”

“Like I said, it’s my pleasure. Like your parents doing the funerals of the tributes for free. If you’ve got the money to spare, why not use it to help a bit? Tell your brother and his friends they’re welcome to come again this year.”

Ray also confirms it to Twait the next time he sees him at school, ensuring that he knows that his friends are welcome too. Twait seems to be well that day; he doesn’t smile, but he does have his usual, slightly pompous attitude to him, and he tells Ray they’ll definitely be down the docks if they’re welcome, asking if Dunnage could bring his younger sister too, since it’ll be her first Reaping this year. Ray assures him that they could probably bring anyone from the orphanage, they just might not get fed if there’s too many children and too few fish to go around.

Dunnage’s sister, Rode, is in the year below Ray, although he’d never paid much attention to her before Jonah had pointed her out to him one lunch time. Being so close in ages, they spar fairly frequently, and she’s pretty good, but nowhere near Ray’s level, and definitely no where near her brother’s level, either. Just like him, she’s all baby fat and barely looks a day older than ten, but she’s fast with a sword and can hit a target with a bow and arrow like no-one else in either his or her class. The best student in that year turns out to be the apothecary’s eldest daughter, as stuck up, snooty and uncaring as her father, and Ray is glad for every time he manages to knock her down a few pegs in their training.

Like last year they train with the Victors again, except more of their classmates are allowed to train with them. Still no-one can beat them, and Mags still doesn’t join in with the fighting, but no-one minds much. They have more fake interview practice with Mags, and Ray tries his best to show her that he remembered and learnt from what she said last year, but he gets the distinct feeling she doesn’t really remember him.

March brings an awful surprise.

Shad had been at sea, so Ray had volunteered for baby sitting duty again, as most mothers in the community had congregated in Gobi and Steeve’s house to help her bring her baby into the world, which meant that Ray was suddenly in charge of four of Betta’s girls, plus Rasbora and Tali, with only Stone as back-up to help him wrangle all six children. Stone doesn’t enjoy the prospect, but they go about encouraging the children to make sand castles together, and with two older children to stop Tali running to his death, its not quite so bad, trying to keep them all in check.

Except it seems to go on for hours. Normally, if you were at home, you could hear the screaming and crying from within your own house whenever someone was having a child, but Ray and Stone had travelled to the beach to keep out of ear shot of the screams, so as to not upset the children. Ray knew there wasn’t a hard and fast rule for how long it took for a baby to come out; Dad said it took about three hours each start to finish for both of them, and Aki had taken nearly a whole day to have Tali, while Betta seemed able to pop hers out in minutes, but as time ticked by and the kids were getting hungry, Ray started to wonder what he was meant to do with them.

“Maybe I’ll head home and see if there’s anything I can grab them,” Stone offered. “I’m sure everyone’s parents will pay mine back in turn.”

“Yeah, but what do three year olds eat?” Ray asked, pointing towards Amber and Agnartha, Pollock’s younger twins. “Can you give them normal food like the older kids, or do you need to give them milk like a baby?”

The question makes Stone pause too, looking between the twins. Both of them were the youngest in the family (Shad was, technically, three hours older than Ray, but Dad had reckoned they’d accidentally swapped them around so much that no-one really knew who was the oldest anymore), so neither of them had ever had to deal with a baby sibling, or watched them getting fed.

“Maybe we could ask Candiru?” Ray offered. Candiru would probably have the best idea out of all of his friends, but she hadn’t been at home when they’d called for her that morning. Probably out spear fishing again. Stone glanced up, pointing towards the land.

“Or her mom,” he suggested, and Ray turned to see Mrs Bowline stood watching them, a tight look on her face. She waved them over, and Ray suggested Stone keep an eye on the kids while he went over to see what was up.

“Hi, Candiru’s mom,” Ray greeted. It had been ages since he got to say that, and she looked as miserable as she always did, glancing towards the kids and Stone.

“How are the kids doing?” She asked, to which Ray shrugged.

“Getting hungry, how much longer do you think Gobi is going to be?” He asked, watching Mrs Bowline flinch. “Something wrong?”

“Ray, I need you to be mature about this, okay?” She asked, and Ray frowned but nodded. “You and Stone might need to baby sit a little longer than we were expecting, is that alright?”

“Yeah, I haven’t any other plans for the day,” Ray shrugged. He had considered going to see Jonah, but if he was needed at home, he could do that another day. Mrs Bowline nodded.

“I need you to promise me you’re not going to mention this to any of the kids, alright? Let their parents do that. Ray, Gobi is dead.”

The words seem to take a second to settle in as Ray frowns, slowly repeating the statement. “Gobi is… dead? What about her baby?”

“She’s dead too,” Mrs Bowline stated. “There was complications with the birth. Gobi didn’t make it. Steeve is… taking some time to process it, it’s a lot for anyone to go through. I need you to watch over Rasbora until he’s ready to explain everything to her. And… to keep her from suspecting there is something wrong, I need you to keep watching over the other children, too.”

“Okay,” Ray agreed, still feeling slightly dizzy. Gobi was dead? But she’d been so happy and full of life just yesterday, she seemed completely fine. How could she be dead so quickly? “What about lunch though? I don’t even know what three year olds eat.”

“Same as five year olds,” Mrs Bowline assured him. “I’ll bring some sandwiches ‘round for you all soon, just keep an eye on them all, okay?”

“Okay,” Ray agreed, walking back across the beach and sitting down among the kids. “Stone, Mrs Bowline wants to talk to you, too,” he stated, then realising he needed to make up a lie quickly to stop the kids becoming suspicious, he added, “Someone’s messed with the toilets again.”

“Wasn’t me this time,” Stone insisted, but stood to his feet and made his way over, chatting with Mrs Bowline for a minute or two, before returning ashy faced. They had to keep it a secret from Rasbora, there was no other option.

But she didn’t make it easy or comfortable to do so. Rasbora was ecstatic for the arrival of her little sibling, describing all the games she wanted to teach them, all the adventures they’d have, everything… Sitting listening to it all, knowing in a few short hours Rasbora was going to get the worst news of her life, not only that she wasn’t getting a baby sibling, but she no longer had a mom… it was awful. Ray struggled to keep smiling through it all.

Mrs Bowline returned with sandwiches and snacks for all seven of them, the little kids descending upon them with fervour, while Ray struggled to swallow around the anxiety in his throat, seeing the same look on Stone’s face. It felt like forever before he spotted Steeve crossing the beach, Rasbora spotting him the exact same moment, jumping to her feet and rushing across the sand.

“Dad!” She screamed, wrapping her arms around his legs. Steeve was visibly crying still, his face red and puffy, although he put on a brave smile for her. “Do I have a brother or sister, then? Can I meet them now?”

Steeve takes a very shaky breath, wrapping his arms around her too, lifting her up to carry home in his arms. “We need to have a serious talk, Razzie. Come on.”

Steeve carried her off the beach, Rasbora never pausing in her long diatribe to him, begging to know everything about her new sibling, and Ray feels sick to his stomach. Stone wrapped his arms around his knees.

“Didn’t know that could even happen,” Stone muttered. “Why would anyone ever have kids if you can die from trying to give birth to them?”

“Dunno,” Ray shrugged, spotting Aki crossing the beach towards them, with Betta close behind. “I wouldn’t want to risk it.”

The crying from Steeve and Rasbora went on all through the night, and all through the week, too. A grief so heavy, Steeve seemed to stand hunched over from it, struggling to carry on from day to day, only ever leaving his house with Rasbora clinging to his legs, and when the Salty Cairn pulls up early the next morning, Ray has to break the news to Shad mere hours before Steeve has to carry his dead wife and child towards the ocean. Rasbora’s too young to help, instead keeping hold of her father’s shirt as he carries the town coffin. Ray and Shad keep watch of Betta and Pollock’s kids so their parents can help carry the coffin, with some other friend Ray hadn’t caught the name of making the fourth position. Once more, Danio takes up the funeral song, and this time, Ray feels comfortable enough singing along with the chorus.

As the souls of the dead fill the space of my mind

I’ll search without sleeping ‘til peace I can find

I fear not the weather, I fear not the sea

I remember the fallen, do they think of me?

When their bones in the ocean forever will be.

Everyone can see in Steeve’s face that there’s no peace for him to find, on the boat today, as he takes his wife to join the ocean once more, or on any of his boat trips ever again. Shad and Ray walk Betta’s daughters as far as they can, before holding them back, watching as Steeve lifted his daughter onto the boat with him, Pollock and Betta stepping off, letting them have their final good-bye in peace.

“What do you think will happen to Rasbora when her dad’s out at sea now?” Shad asked quietly as they watched the boat pulling away. “The peacekeepers don’t like it when kids younger than ten are left home alone to fend for themselves for too long.”

They couldn’t take Rasbora away the way they did Keeli. No way could Ray let Rasbora be taken to the orphanage, forced into the Academy, forced to let herself be killed to keep a stranger’s child alive. He wouldn’t let them.

“I suppose we’ll just have to help out, if we can,” Ray suggested quietly, and Shad nodded.

It was a muted few weeks down at the dockyards after that, even the children played quieter, as if not wanting to disturb the sea as people still mourned Gobi’s passing, and the loss of yet another child. It had been quite a while since they had had a death quite so young; since Nangra managed to get his boat, he’d been more than willing to share food or lend money to people to ensure their children didn’t starve, willing to pay forward for the apothecary in exchange for other services that the apothecary wouldn’t accept. No-one liked to accept money, but when the children were crying from hunger, most parents weren’t too proud to swallow their pride and ask for help, and after losing a child himself to malnutrition many years ago, Nangra was always quick to help and slow to ask for payment back.

It was uncomfortably quiet, until the day came again that children could sign up for the tesserae.

Neither Ray or Shad had to take it; Dad made more than enough money on the boat to pay for Ray’s school and for all their food, and keep a bit in savings too, and Stone’s older brother was determined to work had to ensure they had enough money that Stone didn’t need to take any either, but Candiru was not quite so privileged. Despite it being the reason her sister had been killed, she had to take tesserae. Her father was still not working, still drinking too heavily, and if it weren’t for the grain and Stone’s parents stepping in to make sure Candiru and her brother were still fed every day, they’d no doubt have starved to death by now. Every year she had to be entered five times to keep her alive to sign up for more the next year, and the night before the tesserae sign ups started, she seemed almost sick with worry.

Screaming woke them all up the next morning, screaming coming from a few doors down, and Ray and Shad had found themselves wandering outside in a half-asleep daze to see Candiru’s dad laid on his back in the street, trying desperately to get himself upright again.

“Livida, wait…” Barra insisted, his words slightly slurred, wincing in the bright sunlight. Hungover again, or possibly already drunk, just as he was most days since Altum’s death. But Candiru’s mom didn’t seem to be waiting, as one of Barra’s crutches was launched out of the house towards him.

“Wait for nothing!” She barked. “You think I need you? You think I need you, stinking up my house? Get out! Get out!”

“Livida, please,” Barra begged. “I’ll change, I will. It’s been hard-”

“You could have changed months ago!” Livida snapped, throwing the other crutch at him, barely missing his face as he yelped in surprise. “Altum’s dead! She’s dead, and nothing we do can change that, and yet you seem to think if you get yourself drunk enough for long enough you’ll be able to, what, forget she ever died? She’s dead, Barra! She’s dead!”

Livida’s voice was cracking on every repeat of the word dead, throwing article of clothing after article of clothing out at Barra. Both of them were crying, the whole neighbourhood watching the spectacle with silent awe.

“I can’t… I love her still, Livida. You don’t know how hard-”

“Don’t you give me that, you bastard!” Livida screamed. “You don’t know how hard it is to have carried her for nine months. Nine! Months! Changed her nappies, and held her every time she cried, only to have her wrenched away from me. I don’t know how hard it is for you? You don’t know how hard it is for me! That damned tesserae took her from us, and now you expect Candiru to take some for you? For you?! When you’ve done nothing for this family but take and take and take since Altum’s death? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Livida disappeared for a moment, returning with a nearly empty bottle of rum, which Barra finally pushed himself to his feet for. “Livvy-”

“Don’t you ‘Livvy’ me, Barra! You’ll get out of my house, out of my life, out of MY children’s lives if you know what’s good for you. Go die in a ditch for all I care. You will not risk any more of my children,” Livida declared, taking the rum bottle and throwing it at Barra, letting the glass smash across the floor, before turning to the congregated neighbours, tears still streaming down her face. “Got enough of a show, did you? Go on, get! Before I throw worthless junk at you too!”

She disappeared into the house, slamming the door shut behind her, while Barra tried to grab his discarded belongings, his twisted leg collapsing under his weight. “Any chance I could get a hand?” Barra asked, but the general consensus of the crowd was one of disapproval towards him, desperately trying to gather his clothes around the glass shattered on the floor, and it wasn’t lost on Ray how Barra had seemed most alive when the rum was brought out, not when his kids were mentioned at all. Livida’s front door opened again, and Barra looked up, his face awash with hope for another chance, but Livida’s face said otherwise.

“Speaking of useless junk, you can have this back too!” She yelled, throwing a net at Barra, which was met with a general gasp of shock from the crowd, Barra scrambling to pick it up.

“No, Livvy, please, I still love you, I still-”

“I don’t love you!” She snapped. “Get out of my life!”

The door slammed once more, and Barra collapsed to the floor, his fingers still twisted in the netting. Any fisher down the dockyards who wanted to get married had to make a net from scratch for their future partner, to show they could provide for them, to show symbolically how, like the knots of the net, they would be tied together forever. The official paperwork at the justice building meant very little to most dockyard people: you could be married without it being official. You could be officially married, and not married in the eyes of the community, if you didn’t have the net. They were always displayed in the houses of wedded couples, some men would take weeks or even months to make the net as perfect as they could just to impress their future wife, and it wasn’t uncommon for wives to brag about their nets, either. The net went with the couple, together; when one of a married couple died, the net would be kept safe, ready to be buried at sea when the other partner died, for them to be both reunited with their shared net once more.

To throw a net away like that… it was tantamount to breaking off the marriage forever. The officials didn’t recognise official divorce, wouldn’t allow either person to remarry unless one had died, but to discard the net made it very clear: Livida and Barra were no longer a couple, and Barra had no hope of ever being taken back.

It was a couple of days before they saw Candiru again, quieter than ever, joining them and Stone to go spear fishing down the beach. She confirmed her father really had, well and truly, been kicked out of the house for good, although he still banged on the door in the night, begging to be let back in. She was going to have to take over a lot of baby sitting duties for her little brother until he turned ten next year, but there was a small part of her that mostly seemed relieved. When they’d all caught their fill, they’d sat on the sand, their tridents piled between them, and Candiru whispered to them, as if admitting a terrible thing.

“I’m glad Mom threw him out. I don’t like hearing them yelling at each other every night, always calling each other nasty things. And I’m glad I don’t have to take as much tesserae, too,” Candiru explained.

“I think everyone down the docks is happy for it, too,” Stone confirmed. “I heard Mom telling Dad that it was the best thing your mom could have done, throwing him out like that.”

“I overheard Aki threatening to do the same to Danio if he ever put Tali at risk the way your Dad did to you,” Shad added.

With tesserae being taken, the reaping day quickly loomed on the horizon again, and just as last year, the anxiety that built up in Ray’s stomach threatened to make him sick, to the point his teacher sent him to a seperate room during an interview practice session to get him some private teaching on trying to control his vomit response. It didn’t make him feel any better, but he managed to avoid vomiting, which his teachers seemed to think was more important.

During fighting practice, he must have looked a sight, as when he takes a break he finds himself surrounded by Twait and his friends, teasing him, assuring him. They’re a funny bunch, the four of them, all different sizes and shapes, with Twait being taller than any one person had a right to be, all lean and green-eyed, easily passing as nearly twenty instead of his sixteen years of age, while at the opposite end was Dunnage, with his short stature and baby fat still visible on his face, he could probably pass as fourteen. Probably even as a really tall twelve year old on a good day. “How many times are you even in the Reaping, Ray?” Twait asked, elbowing him in the ribs.

“Twice. But I have to volunteer if Shad is reaped, so really its four times,” Ray explained, to which all four boys gave a groan of understanding.

“That sucks,” Seine agreed. “I’m in ten times, and I have to volunteer for some brat who’s parents own the bakery, so it’s practically fifteen times. Clew’s got some ship-builder’s idiot of a kid, don’t you?”

“Could be worse, could be Twait,” Clew offered, to which Twait groaned.

“I’m in five times for myself, plus ten times to get tesserae for myself and Allis, plus five times for the moron I have to volunteer for. You know I met him once? Parents own one of the fish shops that are really popular with the tourists. Has his own head so far up his arse when he yawns you can smell his farts. Awful prick. Dunnage is in the same amount of times.”

“Can’t let our sisters go hungry,” Dunnage agreed. “And can’t let Rode take tesserae, I mean, come on, she’s twelve. She wouldn’t stand a chance if she gets reaped.”

“So four times suddenly sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?” Seine offered, nudging Ray with his shoulder, to which Ray swallowed.

“Yeah, but my brother’s not an idiot, a moron, a prick, or got his head stuck up his ass. What would he do if I have to volunteer for him? I saw how broken it made Candiru’s family when Altum got reaped two years ago, what if Shad struggles like them? And… and… what if he doesn’t? Would that be worse?”

“You can’t control what happens after you get reaped or volunteer, kid. Nothing that’s not immediately in front of you, anyway. And, if it does happen,” Twait said, giving him a smile. “Allis and I will make sure he’s got someone to lean on. I promise.”

At least, if the worst does come to pass, Shad would have his friends still, and likely Ray’s friends too, just like how Altum’s friends stepped forward to help Candiru’s family when she died. Although all the pondering over his death does get him thinking about them.

“If I died,” Ray asked once, unprompted, at the dinner table, less than a week before the Reaping, making everyone else wince in pain. “Would you send Shad to the Academy in my place?”

“What?” Shad asked, horror written across his face. “Wh- why would you ask that? You’re not going to the Games, you’re not going to die!”

“But if I did,” Ray emphasised. “Because you can join the Academy late, Twait did.”

“...We probably would,” Dad agreed. “Wouldn’t make sense to not do it.”

“Hmm.”

They’re given refreshers on conducting themselves at the Reaping, told to remember to either smile brightly or cry loudly as required if their names are called. They have another fake Reaping, too, though this time Ray is one step ahead of before. He doesn’t recognise either person who is fake reaped.

Shad struggles to sleep, and that means Ray struggles to sleep, too. He’s kept awake all night by Shad’s tossing and turning, sometimes even woken up by Shad on purpose, asking him, once more, to promise they wouldn’t get seperated. That Ray wasn’t going to go to the Games, and Ray tries to assure him the best he can, but he knows, just as he knew last year, that if he heard Shad’s name being called, he was volunteering. There were no two ways about it. He didn’t want to die, but he wanted to live without Shad even less.

The night before the Reaping has yet another party, and this time, with the tricks he’d been taught to fight back his nausea, Ray manages to eat the food, even talk with other people. Jonah is a lot more chatty, but Ray can see in the fidgeting movement of his hands that its all a cover for how anxious he really felt. Ray tries to assure him, taking his hand and squeezing it for reassurance like he did with Shad, but some of the eighteen year olds laugh at them when they see him doing it, and Jonah quickly takes his hand back.

The backed tributes are a boy named Homer and a girl named Milpond. Jonah whispers to Ray that neither of them actually plan to volunteer, and Ray has to use every trick in the book to keep from vomiting.

He can’t sleep that night, neither can Shad. They lay awake, cuddling each other, occaisionally crying in fear, until something finally forces them to sleep, even if Ray can’t remember it, because he finds himself waking up late the next morning. Once more they go for a walk down the beach with Stone and Candiru. There are no older siblings this year. They had to register themselves all alone.

“Do you get to find out if someone is volunteering this year, Ray?” Candiru asked, and Ray shook his head.

“Rumours say there isn’t anyone, but the Academy always picks its favourite tributes, the ones they reckon could win the Games if they volunteer,” Ray explained. “But Jonah reckons they won’t.”

At the mention of the backed volunteers, Shad stiffens, swallowing hard, and Ray tries to ask what’s wrong, but Shad just shakes his head, refusing to elaborate. Instead its Stone who speaks, “But someone else might volunteer, right? There’s often volunteers.”

“A lot of them are orphanage kids who’ve been bought to volunteer in place of rich people’s children,” Ray explained, watching as all three of his friends turned to him with looks of horror. “That’s why there’s so many orphans at the Academy. They’ve all been told to volunteer for someone else.”

“That’s awful,” Candiru whispered, and Ray nodded. “Not just for them, but… giving us false hope someone else might volunteer. Who in their right mind would volunteer for us?”

“It’d only ever be someone’s older sibling, or twin brother,” Ray agreed, feeling Shad’s hand slip into his again.

They head home shortly before the Reaping, getting dressed in their Reaping clothes, helping to smarten up each other’s outfit, before Ray pulled Shad into a tight hug, squeezing him as tight as he could, Shad squeezing him back. They could have stood like that for hours if they could, hurting each other in desperation to never be seperated, but Mom eventually shook their shoulders, reminded them they had to go, and so they let go, and headed once more to the Justice Square.

Their neighbours yelled their well-wishes as they went, Danio proudly waving a fish at them with one hand, hugging Tali tight to him with the other, and on they went to the square, once again full to the brim with kids, except now they weren’t the youngest, and lots of kids were visibly trying to not burst into tears at sign up.

Once more Ray spotted Twait giving his last well-wishes to Allis, while Dunnage was stood next to him, wishing the same to Rode, each leaving their little sisters with a last hug of good luck. Twait looked up to see Ray and Shad, giving them a nod, before warding Dunnage off with him to go join the sixteen year olds. Ray and Shad gave each other one last hug, before seperating off into the crowd of thirteen year olds, with Ray finding Jonah, greeting him wordlessly, and standing to attention as silence was called for throughout the crowd.

Out came the Capitol officials, then the Victors. They always looked fairly serious and solemn, but today moreso than any other day Ray would see them. Once more they were given a speech as to why the Capitol wanted them all dead, before Decimus stepped forward to the girl’s reaping bowl, rifling through all the names before grabbing one, stepping back to the microphone, clearing his throat, and Ray felt nauseous once more, so worried for all his friends.

“River Fathom,” He called out, and Ray gave a sigh of relief. He knew the surname. Knew which family had just had their daughter reaped: the sweet shop owners, and truly, if anyone deserved to lose their kid, it was them, but at the sight of River Ray felt sick that he’d even thought that much. River looked absolutely petrified as she walked to the stage, fighting back tears, trying to stop her hands from shaking, wiping them down her pretty dress. She came from the crowd of twelve year olds. She wasn’t an Academy student. She didn’t have a single chance. Decimus called for volunteers, and no-one spoke up, and Ray felt mounting sorrow for her. Town kids in the Games rarely won, either. If they weren’t Academy students, they had very little applicable skills to even help them survive. They barely even knew how to be hungry. When Decimus asked for volunteers a second time, however, a tiny little voice spoke up.

“I volunteer as tribute,” it called out, and Ray felt his stomach drop. He knew that voice. Knew it all too well, and when the owner stepped out of the crowd, his fears were confirmed. It was Rode, tiny little Rode, who could climb a tree faster than anyone else he’d ever seen, shoot a bow like she’d done it all her life, but couldn’t stop her lip from trembling as she was forced to throw her neck onto the blade to save the bastards at the sweet shop from losing their daughter. No. Let a parent-less child, who only had an older brother who couldn’t volunteer in her place die instead. Less people who had to mourn.

River looked overjoyed, gratefully bounding off the stage, rejoining with her friends, while Rode climbed onto the stage, gave the Capitol her full name, and stood shaking with tears while Decimus stepped forward to pull the second name. The name for the boy who was going to join her. Well, whoever it was, he was going to have better luck than she did, surely. It seems to take Decimus forever to pick out a name, and Ray feels the nausea creeping up his throat again. What if its Shad? What if its Shad, and they have two volunteers this year, neither of which stood a fish’s chance in a fire of getting home? No-one won the Games before they were fifteen, no-one…

And then Decimus is stepping back to the microphone, unfolding the paper, and Ray barely feels like he can breath, listening to the name being called out, feeling his entire stomach drop to his knees.

It’s not Shad who’s reaped.

It’s Jonah Commodore.

Chapter Text

He feels a hand clench around his for a moment, hears Jonah’s breath catch in his throat, as all around them people start to turn towards him, including Ray, seeing the absolute horror in Jonah’s face. He’d been Reaped. He had been Reaped. Jonah was going to the Games.

Jonah let go of Ray’s hand, turning to head towards the stage, while Ray desperately whispered in his ear as he passed “Don’t forget to smile,” watched as Jonah swallowed, and nodded, plastering the bravest smile he could muster onto his face, but Ray can see every inch of terror within it, and it seems to take forever for Jonah to walk out of the crowd of thirteen year olds, down the aisle towards the stage, slowly climbing it, gazing out across the crowd until he stared intently at one certain location just a few metres away, and it takes Ray a moment to realise he’s accidentally settled on Shad instead of him. Ray hoped Shad had as comforting face for Jonah as Ray did.

Decimus didn’t smile at Jonah, even when Jonah tried to smile at him, instead stepping back to the microphone. “And is there any volunteers willing to take Jonah’s place?” He asked, and Ray bit his lip. Maybe Jonah’s parents had been smart, had paid for him to go to the Academy and paid for an orphan too, but Ray wasn’t sure Jonah’s parents were quite that cruel.

“I volunteer as tribute!” A voice called out from somewhere ahead of Ray, the screens at the front of the stage showing a quick whizz as the cameras zeroed in on the voice, and Ray’s moment of relief was suddenly replaced with another kick in the stomach, because he recognised that voice and face too.

Dunnage.

“Well, come on up then,” Decimus declared, while Dunnage was already pushing his way through the crowd, a look of grim determination on his face as he shoved aside all the other sixteen year olds. He barely seemed to be holding back from sprinting towards the stage, as if fearful if he took too long, someone else would take the spot. Unlike Rode and Jonah, though, he didn’t look scared. Resigned, more like. He climbed up on stage, patting Jonah on the shoulder as a peacekeeper lead Jonah back towards the crowds. “What’s your name, young man?”

“Dunnage Tender,” He announced down the microphone while Decimus frowned, looking between him and Rode.

“A brother and sister, perhaps? Well. Let’s hear it for our tributes: Dunnage Tender and Rode Tender.”

The applause was muted, but Ray was barely paying attention to anything else, only to Jonah stood barely off stage, all bravery forgotten as he sobbed, entirely on his own, shaking where he stood. Decimus encouraged the two tributes to shake each other’s hands, but Dunnage just stepped forward, wrapping Rode up in a tight hug instead, whispering something into her ear that the cameras didn’t catch, before leading her off to the Justice building before the peacekeepers could push them, and at last, they were allowed to move.

Ray pushed his way through the crowd, not even stopping to find Shad, although Shad followed close behind, his heart still drumming too loud in his ears to hear anything else going on around him, only notice as Twait shoved past him to get to Allis.

“Allis, go down to the beach with your friends, I’ll meet up with you, I’ve got to get to Dunnage to say good-bye,” Twait explained, noticing Ray and pushing her towards him. “Ray, can you-”

“No,” Ray said forcefully, pushing Shad towards Allis instead. “I have to get to Jonah.”

Twait nodded, grabbing Ray’s hand and dragging him along, both shoving their way through the crowds of children trying to get back to their parents, not caring for pushing too hard. Most of the kids were older than Ray anyway, and if they were stupid enough to not get out of the way, that was their own problem.

Jonah hadn’t moved, still crying beside the stage, and once clear of the crowd Ray made a beeline for him, wrapping his arms around him as Jonah sobbed into his shoulder, Twait giving a quick farewell wave before rushing to the Justice Building.

“I thought I was going to die,” Jonah whimpered out as Ray squeezed him tight, running his hand up and down his back.

“It’s alright, Jonah. You’re not. You’re gonna come down to the beach and celebrate with us instead, right?” Ray offered, to which Jonah gave a teary nod, sniffling loudly as Ray gave him another tight squeeze. “You’re not going to the Games.”

“Poor Dunnage,” Jonah hiccuped, “He’s going to die instead for me.”

“He could win,” Ray insisted. “He’s good, even if he’s only sixteen. Better than Twait and Clew, better than you and me, too.”

That didn’t seem to help, as Jonah’s breath hitched again, but before Ray could say or do anything else, he felt a hand grab his shoulder, pulling him away as Jonah cried out for him to come back.

“Get away from my son,” Mrs Commodore hissed, shoving Ray away hard enough that he stumbled, needing to hold onto the edge of the stage to stay upright. Jonah’s parents had descended upon him, holding him tight, soothing away his tears, as if they actually cared for him any day other than today. “Come on, Jonah, lets head home.”

“But Ray said I could come down to the beach with him and his friends,” Jonah insisted, to which Mrs Commodore’s eye twitched.

“You don’t want that,” she insisted, shooting Ray a dirty look, which he returned with a sneer. “I’ll bake you a cake, you can eat as much of it as you like, don’t you want some more sweets rather than some smelly fish down by the docks?”

The sugar seemed to perk up Jonah, although he glanced back to Ray, clearly torn between the two options. Ray just shrugged. “Go enjoy your cake, Jonah. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay!” Jonah agreed, taking his parents hands and happily leaving the Justice Square without further complaint, even if there was still tears streaming from his eyes and a tremble in his step. Ray briefly considered waiting for Twait to come out of the Justice building, but no doubt Twait could take care of himself. Instead Ray heads for home, where Shad, Allis and Keeli are already waiting for him, dressed ready to go party down at the beach.

“Is Jonah okay?” Keeli asked, glancing behind Ray. “Is he not coming?”

“He went home, his mom offered to make him cake,” Ray explained with a shrug. “He was crying, but seemed pretty happy that his mom wanted to spoil him, so I wasn’t going to argue it.”

Did it really have to take Jonah nearly being reaped for the Games for his mom to realise she was meant to love her son? All Ray hoped for was that she’d remember it for the rest of Jonah’s life this time, rather than picking her daughter over him time and time again.

Down at the beach they play in the sand, since Allis wants to wait for her brother to join them before they really start celebrating, but Twait doesn’t want to celebrate at all. He greets Allis with a big hug, before telling her to play with her friends instead. Him, Clew and Seine don’t join in the festivities at all, sitting at the edge of the beach in their reaping clothes, not talking to each other or anyone else at all. Ray still tries to enjoy the party, but with their misery hanging just in his periphery, it’s difficult.

He goes over to speak to them at one point, Twait watching him approach before calling out with a sigh. “We’re having a moment, Ray. We’ll beat you up later.”

“Dunnage could win,” Ray tried to reassure them, but all it seems to do is bring them more pain. “He could! He’s fast and smart and-”

“And he doesn’t want to win,” Clew explained. “He volunteered to save his little sister. Either our friend dies, or his sister does, and he wants her home. We either lose him through death or through grief, there’s no happy ending here.”

“Never is for us,” Seine muttered. “Life sucks.”

“I’d drink to that, if I had a drink,” Twait agreed, waving Ray away. “Go on, go have fun. Don’t let our misery ruin your night.”

Ray does try to go back to playing and celebrating, but he can’t stop thinking about Dunnage and Rode. Poor, poor Rode and Dunnage. Trying to keep each other safe in an Arena of all places, trying to get to Victory, no matter the cost.

When fish is served, once more the dockyard kids come first, with Allis and Keeli counted among them, followed by Clew, Twait and Seine, who take the fish with a quiet thanks but still don’t join the party. At some point, Nangra headed over to speak to them, sits with them for a long while, before leaving once more, a half empty bottle of rum laid where he sat. After a while, Ray spots the three drinking from it wordlessly.

The joy of the party feels so much more muted than last year, and when they finally retreat to bed, Shad’s exhausted from all of the playing, but Ray can’t sleep, still thinking about Dunnage, just another brother willing to risk everything for the sake of his sibling. Just like him.

He heads off to school the next day, and the electric energy of everyone’s excitement at having two Academy students in the Games seems strange and foreign. Zabra seems caught up in it this year too, declaring how happy she was that for once she didn’t really recognise the tributes, but Ray can’t share in the sentiment, and Keeli really can’t.

“But I know them,” she snapped. “Rode sleeps in the same dorm as me, and Dunnage is always standing up for the little kids who get into trouble, even if it gets him punished. They shouldn’t be in the Games any more than List or Orna should!”

“At least they’ve been trained,” Zabra insisted, to which Keeli scoffed.

“Then why didn’t you just volunteer in Orna’s place last year? You were trained, too.”

They stand around in awkward silence until Jonah joins them, beaming ear to ear. Despite his initial disappointment in not being allowed to go to the beach party with Ray and Keeli, he had a much better night than Ray did, with his parents spoiling him rotten with sweets and cake and plenty of cuddles and attention. They’d even had one of their neighbours baby sit his little sister for the night to give him undivided attention.

When they line up to enter the school, one of the teachers calls out a list of names for people to come to ‘supplementary’ lessons. Mostly its a bunch of twelve year old girls, but Ray does recognise Clew, Seine and Twait in the list, although Twait doesn’t step forward.

“Where’s Twait?” The teacher asked.

“Off sick,” Seine explained. “He’s… had a bad turn again.”

“Like it or not, he cannot miss school, not right now,” the teacher instructed. “He needs preparing for the interviews.”

“I don’t think you actually want him in front of the cameras in his state, miss. He won’t do anyone any favours.”

The buzz continues in the classroom as people discuss at length how likely they feel Dunnage is to win. He’s sixteen, and among the best combatants in his class, so his chances are probably pretty good, all things considered, but no-one even talks about Rode, or whether she could get home or not. It seems like everyone else has already given her up for dead. Everyone except Dunnage himself, now deep within the Capitol, and ready to lose everything to let his sister do the impossible.

They watch the reaping re-caps, focusing on what the different tributes look like, trying to calculate their different odds too, to get a better idea as to who is likely to win. District 1 and 2 are sending all volunteers again, all eighteen years old, big, buff teenagers who walk off the stage with a big proud smile on each of their faces. District 3 sends a seventeen year old and a fifteen year old, neither anywhere near the height of the two prior districts. The recap highlights Dunnage hugging Rode, keeping her close to him as he leaves the stage. Other notable tributes include the girl from 5, who is almost as wide as she is tall, the girl from 7, who is all muscle, and the boy from 12, who has clearly been working down the mines from the looks of him, although he’s ridiculously short, shorter even than Pollock. Of the young tributes, there’s another twelve year old from district 8, and a thirteen year old girl from 12, but the rest vary in ages. They discuss and debate the odds, but eventually settle on Dunnage ranking somewhere in the top five, and Rode, for all her skills and training, barely making the top twenty.

That night, Ray barely makes it home in time to watch the tribute parade at Stone’s house again, where they get to see what their brand new stylist has picked out for Dunnage and Rode to wear. Baby pink and stripey, none of them can figure out what they’re dressed at until Johnny suggests they look a little bit like shells, and they all groan with the realisation that their new stylist, a woman named Saffron who had been promoted from District 9, was just as bad as the previous one.

The weekend brings in something Ray hadn’t seen last year, and all previous years was too young to really pay attention to: sponsor collections. Mainly, the dockyards would only collect and donate for one of their own, but this year, Allis tries to get some money together for Dunnage at Seine’s request, though with her quiet voice and anxious demeanour, she doesn’t get far until she catches Nangra’s ear. Maybe his chat with Dunnage’s friends at the beach touched his heart, or seeing Allis near tears as she tried her best to help in whatever way she could, or maybe his big, soft heart can’t take the thought of not helping, but he takes over the donation drive for her, so much louder, so much more part of the community, and Allis returns to the orphanage with a small but never-the-less present chunk of money towards a sponsorship and a triumphant smile on her face.

Twait’s back at school on Monday, but Ray immediately clocks on to what Seine had meant on Friday. Twait looks rough, his hair uncombed, sleep heavy on his face, and he speaks in such a flat tone he barely even sounds like himself. He very much looks and speaks like he’d rather be anywhere other than school, and Ray can hardly blame him. He hadn’t wanted to be at school when his friend’s older sister was at the Games, and Twait had to watch his friend and his friend’s sister fight to the death. He had every right to be as miserable and unco-operative with the teachers as he could, although Ray did miss getting to spar with him in training lessons.

That evening is the release of the training scores, and they all watch with baited breath at Stone’s house once more. Candiru and Stone put bets on what they think Dunnage and Rode will score, each betting a fish each from their next catch, while Shad declares he would never manage to win that bet against Ray. Stone reckons Dunnage will score an seven, and Rode a three, while Candiru takes the more optimist score of Dunnage getting an eight and Rode a five.

“You’re not allowed to bet on it though, Ray,” Candiru declared. “Since you actually know how they fight.”

“You’re both low-scoring both of them,” Ray said matter of factly. “They’re both really good. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rode scores a six at least.”

He’s proven right. Dunnage scores a nine, while Rode scores a seven, with Stone groaning loudly at losing a fish so easily. “Our teacher reckons they dock a maximum point for every year below seventeen you are,” Ray explained. “So Rode’s about as good as they get.”

Which should make Dunnage’s job of trying to get her to victory that much easier.

There’s a two whole days of school before the interviews, which is spent practicing interviews, too. Their class is merged with the year above, as their teacher helps coach Dunnage and Rode’s friends ahead of the final eight interviews, on how to present themselves and how to present their friends, too. When Ray tells Shad as much, he frowns.

“Feels a bit presumptive, doesn’t it? I mean, they’re not even in the Arena yet. They might die in the bloodbath.”

“Less presumptive than training us all just in case one of our friends is Reaped,” Ray shrugged, to which Shad had to agree a little. “Besides, Jonah says the teachers just have a lot of faith in all of us that we could win the Games, so they start the training early.”

Shad shrugs, messing with his nails, and Ray can see in every inch of his face there’s something he wants to ask, but won’t. Ray nudged him. “Go on. What’s wrong?”

“Just thinking… if you had to volunteer for me,” Shad stated slowly, and Ray felt his breath hitch, “If you had to volunteer for me, and I had to do the interview too, because you would win, I’d be really bad at it, wouldn’t I? I mean, I’d freeze up. Your friends would get training, and look good, and me, your twin brother, would look awful.”

“Jonah says they take Academy student’s families in for interview training once their kid reaches the final ten,” Ray assured him. “They’re not gonna let you make us look like fools.”

“Oh,” Shad said, but the frown only deepened. “Guess they’re gonna save themselves a job this year, since Dunnage and Rode’s parents are dead.”

“Ouch Shad, now that’s just cold,” Ray warned, to which Shad looked up at him with a sheepish smile.

“Sorry. Been hanging out with Allis today. She’s really been down, what with her brother being so upset about Dunnage. Think it’s starting to rub off on me.”

They end up watching the interviews at Candiru’s house, since her mom’s off trying to earn extra money and Candiru can’t leave her little brother unattended. Candiru even makes stew from the fish Stone and Shad caught that morning for them all to eat, and though its not really tasty, it does fill a hole and is better than having to eat at home, so Ray doesn’t complain.

The interviews always go girl-boy, so Rode is up first, dressed in a beautiful blue, flowy dress that Stone teases Candiru about wanting to wear until she punches him in the arm. Rode goes for quite a teary angle, so young and scared, putting on the bravest face she can, and Ray can see it starting to upset Candiru, so he wraps an arm around her.

“She’s been taught to do that, she’s probably not actually that upset,” he assured her. “If you’re little and you’re reaped, your best hopes are to either act really sweet or really upset to win the Capitol over.”

It seems to be working too, because the crowd cooes over her while Caesar Flickerman tries to reassure her, with Rode giving him a tear filled smile, thanking him for being so caring, which the crowd melts over. When her interview ends, she exits the stage slowly, being replaced by Dunnage. Dunnage is not teary. Dunnage doesn’t shake, quake or falter. There’s bitterness in his voice and anger in his eyes and he is terrifying on the stage. Brutal. Cold. Angry. A heel and a half, and Caesar reacts in kind, clearly acting up his fear. Only in the last thirty seconds does Dunnage break character.

“So, Dunnage, you’re ready to kill. Ready to win. Care to tell us how you see these Games going?” Caesar asked, and Dunnage’s lips tighten, as he turns to the camera, addressing the nation at large.

“I’m going to do everything I can to get my sister out of that Arena. No matter the cost. Rode is getting home.”

“But Dunnage, there can only be the one Victor,” Caesar reminded him. “Surely you don’t plan to lose?”

“I am going to lose either way, Caesar. But know this: there is nothing that will stop me from keeping my little sister safe. No winnings could be any better than knowing my sister will keep on living. Nothing will stop me. She will win.”

As his interview ended, he stood from the seat, not even saying good-bye to Caesar, instead crossing over to where his sister still sat, pulling her in for a hug as the crowd cheered for them both. Nothing got the Capitol going like a good tear-jerker, and Dunnage and Rode were playing it up for them spectacularly.

Ray struggles to sleep again that night, so worried on Dunnage and Rode’s behalfs for what the morning would bring, tossing and turning and constantly waking Shad up. Shad tries to comfort him, but what was there to be said? Ray couldn’t do anything to help them at all.

In the morning they eat breakfast and head down to the Justice Square to watch the Games begin, meeting up with Candiru and Stone. No doubt Ray’s friends would be watching from home, and Allis probably curled up with her brother, if not trying to drag him through the motions of trying to take care of himself. The screens were giving their usual annual recounting of the Dark Days, of why the Games were a thing at all, and Ray could see Candiru’s hands clenched into fists. It was stupid, the whole thing was stupid. Altum shouldn’t have had to die just because some adults years ago decided to rebel, decided that they didn’t want to watch their kids starve to death while the fish was stolen from their hands. No-one in the last twenty-four games had even been born during the Dark Days, why should they get punished for something they had no say over? But the screen was blacking out, a voice declared the start of the Games, and they finally got a sight of the Arena.

It was a beach.

A beach! A beach! Exactly what Dunnage and Rode needed and were no doubt hoping for! At least half of the Arena was made up of sand or water, with great, crashing waves lapping against some of the starting plates, the rest of the Arena being almost jungle-like in appearance. They showed fish swimming around in the water, too, plenty of food, plenty to survive off of, and Ray couldn’t help but smile. It was the perfect Arena for District 4 tributes!

The gong went off, signalling the start of the Games, and the tributes broke off into running, the cameras showing Rode immediately rushing towards the jungle, climbing a nearby tree until she was in the topmost branches, while Dunnage rushed towards the cornucopia, grabbing himself a trident and immediately killing the boy from 8 who’d followed him in. The first kill of the Games, too. Other tributes were rushing in, Dunnage taking up battle with the girl from 7, Fern, who was desperate to reach an axe, but seeming to sense she was surrounded and out of luck, swore loudly, grabbing a backpack and fleeing instead, completely unarmed. Dunnage threw the trident after her, but missed, swearing himself and grabbing a spare, launching himself back into the fighting.

By the time the fighting had ended, eleven tributes lay dead, while Dunnage had only a few scratches to him, and Rode was still hiding in the tree. The entire Cornucopia stash was theirs, par a few supplies taken by other tributes.

“How many did you get?” The boy from 2 demanded of Dunnage, who gave a triumphant grin.

“Four. Told you I could hold the weight for both of us,” he declared

“Suppose you could. But you better hope that holds up, we don’t take charity cases,” the boy warned. Dunnage just scoffed.

“Not charity. Just remember, if you want to keep me, you have to keep her, too. We’re in this together,” Dunnage declared, grabbing a bow and a quiver of arrows before leaving the Cornucopia, armed to the teeth, and heading towards Rode. “Fighting’s over, Rodey. Come see what I’ve got you.”

Rode climbed down from the tree with Dunnage spotting her, pulling her into a hug the second she reached the ground. After a few seconds spent with their arms around each other, Dunnage let go, handing her the bow, which Rode took with a grateful smile, wrapping her arms around that, too. “Thanks, Dunnage,” Rode said, before her smile feel into a worried frown. “You’re bleeding!”

“Nothing too bad, I’ll heal,” he assured her. “’Sides, we’ve got all the first aid kits now, just wait ‘til you see all our supplies. We’ll feed you better than at home,” Dunnage joked, while handing her an arrow. “Think you can use the bow? Not too big or too taut, is it?” He asked, to which Rode knocked an arrow and pulled back the string, shaking her head. She let it fly, hitting a tiny whorl on a tree ten feet away.

“I can use it,” she confirmed, to which Dunnage grinned, scruffing up her hair.

“Come on, then, my little archer. Let’s go catch us some fish, see what the ocean will provide us today.”

They both made it through. It was about as good as anyone could hope for for the first day in the Arena, although the rest of the Career pack clearly looked displeased with Rode being among their numbers. She couldn’t look more out of place among the eighteen year olds; even with Dunnage looking so much younger than he was, Rode looked like a baby compared to them all, but she carried her bow and kept it on target without an issue, so there was little hiding that she had been trained.

For the rest of the day, they went about their normal business, constantly checking back on the screens to see what was happening, but there was nothing much. The Career Pack went out hunting for more tributes, Rode taking up a role as a scout, climbing up and dashing through the trees, looking for other tributes for the larger pack members to hunt down. She managed to shoot dead a seagull and injure another tribute with her bow, slowing them down just enough for Dunnage to finish them off, and already they were down to half the number of tributes in just one day.

At school the next day, Rode’s friends seemed hopeful, while Dunnage’s friends kept an almost sombre tone wherever they went. Normally they would be laughing, playing, messing with each other, but now they were eerily silent, shutting down anyone who would try and talk to them about Dunnage.

The tributes were quickly learning all they could about the Arena. The seagulls were edible, although really gamey, and neither Dunnage nor Rode enjoyed eating them, preferring to use the nets they’d scavenged from the Cornucopia to catch fish in their down time to roast instead. Elsewhere in the Arena tributes are trying to scavenge plants to eat, but compared to the ocean the jungle feels almost bereft of edible food, but no-one else dares to walk down to the water’s edge to try and get anything with Dunnage and Rode fishing. The nuts from the trees seem to be edible, at least, and that turns out to be the main thing the other tributes survive on, especially Fern from 7, who seems most at home out of everyone among the trees.

“They’re not particularly gentle with their nets though, are they?” Shad asked as they watched Dunnage pull in his. “You can tell neither of them are fishers.”

“Seine said their parents were boat builders, so its not a surprise,” Ray agreed. “I doubt they could even fix their nets if they break them.”

Ray and Shad had been taught to make and fix their nets since they were six, so it was almost second nature, but according to Ray’s friends none of them knew the first thing about nets. Zabra scoffed at the very idea, saying that using them should be easy, it was ‘just a net’ after all, but watching Dunnage and Rode struggling to catch more than one fish at a time really showed that wasn’t the case.

“I don’t think there’s any shuttles in the Arena, though,” Ray pointed out, which made Shad frown.

“Surely they could send one in as a sponsor gift, though,” Shad offered.

“You wouldn’t need one,” Dad offered, but neither Shad nor Ray turned to look at him, continuing to stare at the screen as Dunnage and Rode gave up for the night, returning to camp with their meagre three fish. “You can make a net without one, you just need rope and your hands.”

Neither of them replied, but Ray could see the cogs turning in Shad’s mind regardless.

At school people still buzz with excitement, all chatter about the Games, the screens constantly having a crowd of students around it, watching the action. The boy from 11 finds out some of the plants give out noxious fumes that produce all sorts of effects, and starts trying to experiment on different effects on other tributes or nearby animals. One particularly nasty one sends any animal who eats it completely rabid, with the boy from 11 being chased by his own experiment up a nearby tree for cover, although the effects wear off after about three hours. It’s all the excitement in the Capitol.

The Career Pack go out hunting every day, knocking them off one by one. Fern manages to break the neck of a tribute who scored an axe, finally getting her weapon of choice, and when the Career Pack runs into her, she manages to kill both the District 2 tributes before the Pack makes a break for it.

Or at least, most of the pack.

Rode leaps from tree to tree, but she’s not inconspicuous, and she’s not fast. Fern spots her, dragging her out of the tree while she screams for Dunnage, and everyone at school leaves their classrooms to watch, as Dunnage’s face emptied of blood, ignoring the warnings of the rest of the pack and running back for her.

Rode always looked small, but with the axe held to her neck as she cowered on the floor, she looks tiny.

“Let her go!” Dunnage commanded, trident in hand, his shoulders shaking with rage. “You want a fight with me, you can have it, but let her go.”

“Why?” Fern asked. “You killed my district partner, why shouldn’t I kill yours?”

Dunnage snarled, “Because you let her go now, and I’ll just kill you. But you lay one finger on her, and I’ll make you suffer.”

Fern smirked, raising the axe as Dunnage screamed out a loud “No!”, rushing forward with his trident, managing to hit her just as the axe came tumbling down on Rode, Rode screaming out in pain, while Dunnage kicked Fern down to the floor, stabbing her over and over again in the gut with his trident. A blow that wouldn’t immediately kill. A blow that would definitely see her dead. He kicked the axe away from her, before turning to where Rode lay in a pool of blood, sobbing as her head spurted with blood where there had been an ear just moments before. Dunnage wrapped her up in his arms, running back to camp with her, screaming for help.

By nightfall, no cannons had sounded, but Fern looked grey and Rode was pallid, but alive. Dunnage never left her side, not for a moment, soothing her when she cried from pain. It was at that moment that the district bread arrived, paid for by the sponsor gifts Dunnage and Rode had received, paid for by the dockyard workers and what people Seine could convince to donate from school, and Dunnage gave all of it to Rode, running his fingers through her hair, assuring her everything was going to be alright. He was going to take care of everything.

They were in the final ten of tributes now. Two more, and the reporters would descend upon the school and start questioning Dunnage and Rode’s friends. And yet still, Twait looked like he had barely washed, despite the demands from his teachers that he at least turn up to school looking presentable. Ray overheard Seine suggest to Clew that they might just need to bite the bullet and forcefully scrub Twait themselves.

The boy from 11, Reed, had found Fern and formed some sort of alliance, where he showed her the plants he’d found and she shared her supplies with him, but in her state she could barely move, groaning in pain, and when the Career Pack went on the hunt again, she was easy pickings.

Dunnage and Rode had stayed back at the beach, with Dunnage still babying his sister, tending to her wounds while they fished from the ocean, going for a swim together to clean off, leaving just the District 1 tributes to hunt, finding Fern curled up in her den, having already told her ally to flee and leave her to her death. But she had one last trick up her sleeve.

“Go on,” she hissed. “Kill me, make it quick. But get that damned boy from 4 back for me.”

“We’re planning on killing him anyway, he’s not going to win, and neither is that brat of his, either,” the girl from 1 assured her, but Fern shook her head.

“Don’t just kill him. Make him suffer,” she pointed out the plant that had made the animal rabid, saying, “Give that to the little girl. Tell him it would be a kindness to put her out of her misery.”

They don’t even kill her, just leave her to slowly die all on her own, and her ally doesn’t come back, but they do take the plant, and Ray finds himself watching every passing minute that he can, terrified for what they’ll actually do with it.

He finds out the next day.

It’s a Sunday, so Ray, Shad, Stone and Candiru watch from the Justice Square at Ray’s behest, although Stone and Candiru don’t understand why they have to watch, and Shad seems to mostly go along with it for Ray’s benefit. Ray watches, his mouth running dry, and the boy from 1 stuffs one of the fish fill of the rabid plant when Dunnage and Rode aren’t looking, ensuring it is given to Rode, ensures she eats it all, and Ray feels himself stop breathing.

She goes from normal, smiling albeit in pain, still cupping her ear, to swaying, frothing at the mouth, and when Dunnage tries to shake her out of it, she leaps at him, gnashing her teeth, trying to bite him.

“Rodey!” He yells, pushing her off of him as the tributes from 1 back off. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Shit, she’s gone rabid,” the boy from 1 declared, Dunnage turning to him with a look of confusion, trying to keep Rode away from him. “Rabies. Look at the froth, the aggression, the fact that she’s attacking you. Something must have bit her in the trees she was climbing in.”

“Rabies?” Dunnage asked, standing to his feet and grabbing his trident to try and help block Rode from him. “What’s that?”

“I don’t think fish can catch it,” the girl whispered to her district partner, who swallowed. They were damned good actors, that much was for certain, and the crowd in the square had started shouting for Dunnage not to listen to them, to ignore what they were saying, trying to yell loud enough that Dunnage in the Arena could hear their warnings, but it was all in vain.

“It’s a disease. You catch it, you die. Really slow and nasty, and you can give other people it via bites, too,” the boy explained. It’s at that moment that Fern finally dies, her anti-climatic death being shown for just a brief moment on the screens so as to not detract from the main drama. “Dunnage, it’d be better to-”

“No!” Dunnage yelled. “I know what you’re going to say, but no! No! I can’t! I won’t!”

“She’ll shut down, she’ll be in agony right now, you can’t let her go on like this! The girl insisted. “You can’t let her risk us all like this!”

“No!” Dunnage screamed. “There can’t be- there’s gotta be- something! The Capitol! Medicine! Something!”

“There’s nothing,” the boy from 1 insisted. “I’m sorry, it really would be best for her. I- I lost my father to rabies. You don’t want to see how it will end for her.”

Dunnage was still trying to keep her at a distance with the trident, clearly torn between his desire to keep her alive, and his desire to keep her happy, when a silver parachute descended from the sky beside Dunnage, to which the girl from 1 rushed forward, snatching it before he could see it, while Dunnage had to side step to stop Rode from attacking her as she neared.

“What is it?” Dunnage commanded, still fixated on Rode, while the girl unveilled a small sundial. A cheap, small clock. But more importantly, a message. Time. An instruction. Wait. Mags must be trying to tell Dunnage to wait it out. Telling him to not kill Rode just yet, and the crowd is picking it up. Wait Dunnage, wait. Wait. Wait.

But the girl from 1 is thinking on her feet, swapping out the sundial under the cover of the parachute, pulling out her own knife instead. “It’s a knife, Dunnage. A message. She can’t go on like this.”

“No!” Ray yells out desperately, as Dunnage turns back to Rode, tears streaming down his face. “Dunnage, don’t listen to them! Don’t do it!”

The crowd is chanting it too, don’t do it, don’t do it, keep two tributes from 4 alive so one is more likely to get home, but Dunnage can’t hear them. Can’t see what they see. Can’t know what they know. He’s shaking with sobs, turning his trident around, and stabbing Rode clear through the chest with the prongs.

He can’t hold back his scream, echoed around the square, as Rode’s face falls with surprise, blood joining the froth in her mouth, and Dunnage drops the trident, pulling Rode into a hug, collapsing to the floor with her, still shaking with sobs. “It’s okay, Rodey. It’s okay, it’ll be over soon,” he promised, pointing her out towards the ocean. “Look, just like you always want to do. We’ll watch the fish together, yeah? We’ll watch the fish. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Rode’s losing blood fast, and within a minute, her cannon rings out, still wrapped up in her brother’s arms as he screams his grief, pulling her to him, holding her tightly, rocking where he sat as if trying to lull her to sleep one last time. The square goes silent for so long, so dreadfully long, as if everyone forgets how to breathe, until Ray can hear Danio’s voice, ringing clear through the square, one last song of comfort that the people who need it most could never hear.

“Safe and sound at home again, let the waters roar Jack,

Safe and sound at home again, let the waters roar Jack,”

Ray feels his own breath rattling in his chest, struggles to sing to the chorus when he feels like he’s choking. He wanted Dunnage to get his wish. Wanted Rode to win, so Dunnage’s sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain, and he feels sick now, watching Dunnage in the Arena, being tricked into murdering her himself.

“Long we’ve tossed on the rolling main, now we’re safe ashore, Jack

Don’t forget your old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe”

It was a strange song for Danio to pick to sing, so cheerful sounding, but he didn’t progress from the first verse, repeating it over, and over, and over. Safe and sound at home again. Safe and sound. No more pain for little Rode, only agony for poor Dunnage.

He tries to wash her, there in the Arena, but the cameras cut away from his efforts to show the other tributes, including his allies leaving him alone to ‘mourn’, while they celebrated finally finding a way to get rid of Rode without losing Dunnage. It makes Ray sick to see, the crowd booing them, hurling insults at the screens, and it progressively gets more and more heated the more the two of them laugh about their brilliant plan, until the peacekeepers are forced to step in, guns held aloft, threatening to shoot any and all of them if they didn’t calm down. A few warning shots scattered the crowd out of the square, with Ray and Shad and his friends rushing out in the confusion, cowering in Stone’s house until Stone’s father returned to calm them all down.

At school the next day, the general buzz has reached a fever pitch, and it doesn’t take Ray long to find out why. The reporters have arrived, and even one tribute down, the students are keen to watch the reporters work, to watch Twait, Clew and Seine try to paint their friend, who had spent all of the previous evening crying himself to sleep, as a sure-win for the Games. They were allowed to watch from a distance, to see ‘how it should be done’, but Ray’s surprised to see someone he’d never seen at the school before among them.

“You need to bend down more, Twait,” Allis insisted, grabbing Twait’s shoulders and trying to drag him towards the ground, comb in one hand. Twait was comically taller than her, but he obliged as Allis tried to neaten up his hair. He looked better groomed than Ray had seen him since the Reaping, but that wasn’t saying much. Clearly Clew and Seine had carried out their threat to force him to wash. “All of Panem will be watching, you’ve got to look good.”

“Who cares?” Twait asked, that same monotone to his voice. “Dunnage doesn’t even want to win. I had to beg him to try regardless of if Rode made it or not. He doesn’t want to come home.”

“I don’t care what he does or doesn’t want,” Allis insisted, “I don’t want you to look scruffy in front of the whole country, okay? So stop,” she grabbed him again, pulling him back down to her height, “fighting it!”

“We’re going live in five, everyone,” the reporter announced, clapping her hands together. “Everyone in place, please!”

Allis dragged the comb through Twait’s hair again, almost aggressively, as he voiced his complaints. “If you took better care of yourself this wouldn’t be an issue, Twait! Just comb your hair once a day at least, is that so much to ask?”

“Allis, if it wasn’t, I would, but I can’t at the moment,” Twait insisted. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better, I really will.”

Allis pursed her lips, pulling Twait’s head down one last time to kiss him on his forehead, before letting him go. “Tell them what we all already know, Twait. That Dunnage deserves to win more than anyone else.”

Keeli waved Allis over to join them once she stepped away, mingling among the crowd of students as their teachers hushed them all, a strict warning that one sound and they’d all be kicked out. The cameraman started counting down, and the reporter’s face, pulled unnaturally tight over her bones lit up as she spoke.

“I’m here in District 4 speaking with the close friends of tribute Dunnage Tender. May I introduce you all to Seine, Clew and Twait. So, what do you three reckon to Dunnage’s chances this year?”

“They’re alright,” Twait answered blandly, to which Seine elbowed him hard.

“When Dunnage sets his mind to something, there’s nothing that will get between him and his goal. Not mutts, not tributes, and not any poisons. Dunnage will do everything he can to get home,” Seine explained.

“He doesn’t seem to be doing that right now though, does he?” The reporter asked. The tributes from District 1 had gone off to hunt more tributes, with now only five tributes not in the pack left to kill, while Dunnage had stayed behind by the sea, to fish with his net, every movement slow and torturous. Where before he would always be with Rode, laughing and teasing her, trying to keep her spirits up, now it looks like his very soul had died with her, leaving nothing but an empty shell to continue failing to fish.

“His love for his little sister runs as deep as the ocean itself,” Twait explained. “It’s not a surprise its hit him hard.”

“How do you think he’ll react to finding out she would have been fine, if he’d just waited out the effects of the rabid plant she was given?”

Seine and Clew both flinch at the question, while Twait still doesn’t seem to react, just staring back at the reporter with a cold, uncaring air. Was that Twait’s angle? Or did he truly not care for his friend?

“I hope he doesn’t find out,” Clew answered quietly. “He really doted on Rode. I think it would tear him apart.”

The interview goes on for a long while, so long in fact that they’re sent away to eat lunch before its even finished, with everyone’s first stop along the way being to check the TV screens for updates. The district 1 tributes have killed another tribute, while Dunnage pulls a fish from his net, still fighting back tears. They’re down to seven tributes. Six more to die.

That evening at home Ray and Shad watch the day’s highlights, which features little clips from each interview for each tribute, including the heart wrenching reaction from the family from 3 as they watch their child get disembowelled live on the TV. There’s no interview footage for Dunnage other than from his friends, unlike every other tribute, who has friends, family, neighbours… for Dunnage, its just three teenage boys. And they seem to purposefully cut out any of Twait’s answers.

“It’s kind of sad to see so few people for Dunnage,” Shad muttered. “How were Rode’s friends?”

“Absolutely heartbroken,” Ray answered. “The school offers counselling for anyone who has to watch their friend get killed, at least.”

“Counselling?” Shad asked.

“Yeah, you know, chatting with someone about your feelings and trying to come to terms with it, or something like that. But you gotta go to the school to get it, I think, so I don’t think Candiru could go get some help with Altum’s death.”

“Shame,” Shad muttered. “She acts all tough most of the time but she really misses Altum. I think she could do with talking about it with someone who doesn’t know her.”

Over the next few days they watch Dunnage return to hunting with the pack, helping them kill another two tributes, bringing the total down to five, before Reed finally makes a return, sneaking his poisonous plants into the pack’s food supplies. Dunnage is out fishing when his allies eat the food, and is only alerted when he hears the quick fire cannons, rushing back to see them twisted, the marks of their painful ends evident in the sand around them.

Dunnage avoids the food from the supply, eating his fresh caught fish instead, while the third tribute in the Arena, the girl from 12, gets chased out into the open by a wolf the Gamemakers sent after her, where she comes face to face with Dunnage, still sat by the water’s edge with a fish in his lap, the trident sat beside him.

“Care for a last meal?” Dunnage asked, holding the fish out. The girl froze. “You look hungry. I’m not above killing you, but you should at least get something to eat.”

She really did look starved, even at the reaping she was tiny, all skin and bone. She glares at Dunnage for a moment, trying to find the trick, but hunger must win out, hunger and resignation, and she tentatively steps towards Dunnage, who hands the fish to her, tearing into his own, the trident kept to the far side of him. “This isn’t anything more than a courtesy, mind you. I will kill you when you’re done, but I’ll give you a head start, if you want it.”

“Why?” The girl asked through mouthfuls of food. “Why are you doing this for me?”

“Why not?” Dunnage countered. “These Games will be over soon either way. Why not-”

The screen cut off from their shared meal, instead cutting to Reed, picking his last plants, readying for his final battle. He has no weapons and he’s not big, but then, neither is Dunnage or the girl from 12. Not one of them look a day over thirteen in that Arena, with the girl so starved, Reed shivering with anticipation, and Dunnage’s eyes perpetually red from non-stop crying.

School had finished for summer the day before, and a knock on the front door startles both Ray and Shad, before Stone opens it without permission. “Looks like the final fight will be soon,” Stone explained. “Me and Candiru are going down to the square to watch, are you joining us?”

Ray and Shad did, joining a moving crowd of their neighbours as they rushed down to the square, arriving just in time to see the tail end of Dunnage’s fight against the girl from 12, his trident sticking out from her chest, which he pulled out, watching her body hit the Arena floor as her cannon rang out, the crowd cheering. One more to go. One more to go, and they’d have a Victor, for the first time in nine years. But a part of Ray can’t help but remember that this is exactly where they found themselves last year too, except Dunnage has a few more advantages than Orna. The water in the Arena is still usable, and he only has to fight a little boy from District 11, not three career tributes. Dunnage could win! Dunnage really could win…

But the water from the ocean starts receding, all too quickly, which Dunnage watches with a look of confusion, the fish that had swam within left flopping on the sand as it recedes, and it takes Ray a moment to remember his Dad’s warnings about watching the sea disappear.

“If the ocean ever disappears, you need to, too,” Dad had explained with utmost urgency. “It’s warning you. You need to run, find high ground, as quickly as possible.” The word he’d used returned to Ray’s mind the same moment it seemed to return to everyone else in the crowd, and to Dunnage too.

“Tsunami!” He yelled loudly, before running in the opposite direction, towards the treeline, as fast as he could run, making no efforts to be quiet, trident gripped in one hand. He passed Reed in his mad dash, who screamed with surprise, before watching Dunnage flee in confusion. He stood still for a moment, before realisation seemed to sink in that he should be running too, and he took off after Dunnage just as the wave broke on the beach.

The destructive energy of the wave was intense, smashing the pack supplies Dunnage had left abandoned on the beach, nearly tearing the Cornucopia out of its foundations. It was every bit as terrifying as Dad had made it out to be, while Dunnage had reached the tallest tree in the Arena and started climbing, as fast as he could drag himself up it until he was in the highest branches, the trident abandoned at the base of the tree. Reed screamed as he heard the running water, and Dunnage yelled down to him.

“Climb a tree! Any tree! Just get out of there!”

Reed climbed the tree nearest to him, just barely making it out of reach of the crashing water as it hit the tree base, barrelling into Dunnage’s tree, shaking it and him as Dunnage yelled out, clinging to the tree trunk, water spraying up the branches, soaking both boys to the bone. The square watched in silence until the wave dissapated again, leaving behind it a ruined arena, with almost all the plant life spare the trees ripped apart, detritus scattered amongst the roots, and the entire Arena was waterlogged, too.

The trident was long gone.

Dunnage tenderly climbed down from the tree, looking first for where Reed still was, before rushing over to the pile of debris, rooting around for something Ray couldn’t figure out, while Reed crept down the tree, Dunnage turning to face him as soon as he heard his footsteps.

“Lost something?” Reed asked, and Dunnage scowled.

“I haven’t lost anything to the tsunami I can’t replace,” Dunnage explained, holding a sharp stick behind his back.

“Lost something else before that though, didn’t you?” Reed pushed, and Dunnage visibly swallowed. “Something you can’t replace. I can send you after her, if you want. For you to meet up in the great hereafter right now. It’d be for the best.”

“Fat chance,” Dunnage scoffed. “She made me promise that if she couldn’t get home, that I would. I’m not going back on that deal.”

They stood at an impasse for a moment longer while the crowd started cheering, chanting. Just one more to kill, and they’d have a Victor. Just one more to kill, and Dunnage would come home once more, and their losing streak would be broken. Reed rushed forward towards Dunnage, his poison laced knife in his hand as he made to stab Dunnage, who tried to shove Reed away, unsuccessfully, receiving a thigh full of poison for his troubles, to which Dunnage screamed out. Reed stared in shock for a moment, before rushing to a nearby tree, obviously hoping to climb it and wait out the effects of the poison, but Dunnage was quicker, grabbing Reed as he tried to climb, dragging him back down to the ground as Reed screamed, struggling to break free as Dunnage thrust the small stake he’d found into Reed’s heart, dragging it out to let him bleed free while the crowd screamed with delight, Ray joining in with Shad and Stone, while Candiru watched in stunned silence.

When Reed’s cannon rang out, the cheering reached a fever pitch.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Victor of the 42^nd Hunger Games!” The announcer declared as the crowd chanted Dunnage’s name over and over, while Dunnage in the arena fell backwards, landing on his butt in the water, breathing heavily. “From District 4, I give you Dunnage Tender!”

The chanting turned into cheering, over and over and over, with little direction, while Dunnage just rubbed at his temples in the Arena, looking up as the Victor’s hovercraft pulled into view. And then, another voice could be heard over the roar of the crowd, deep and trained, joy bounding on every word.

“It's a damn tough life full of toil and strife we whalermen undergo.”

The first line alone seems to bring more cheers and the chorus had more people singing it than Ray had ever heard singing along with one of Danio’s shanties, and while he doesn’t know the lyrics, its clearly not one Danio has pulled from nowhere.

And we don't give a damn when the gale is done how hard the winds did blow.

Even strangers Ray had never seen before sing along, towns folk who normally would turn their noses up at the mere mention of a shanty sing at the top of their lungs, still drowned out by Danio’s expert singing.

We're homeward bound from the Arctic around with a good ship, taut and free
And we won't give a damn when we drink our rum, with the girls of Old Maui!”

In the Arena Dunnage has his head in his hands, pulling them away to see his hands shaking, blood seeping from his eyes, his breathing picking up in panic, but the rest of the crowd seems completely ignorant to his distress.

“Rolling down to Old Maui, me boys
Rolling down to Old Maui
We're homeward bound from the Arctic around
Rolling down to Old Maui.”

They watch as the hovercraft drops the ladder to Dunnage, who can barely grab it fast enough, still shaking, his panicked screams lost beneath the sound of the singing crowd. The ladder from the hovercraft is quickly pulled in, Dunnage disappearing into the depths of the ship, back off to the Capitol, while the crowd sings louder and louder, and while none of his friends seem to recognise it either, the joy is infectious and the chorus so short they sing along in no time at all.

It feels like they’re singing in the square together for hours, before the party moves on towards the beach, and while Ray, Stone, Shad and Candiru make to follow the crowd, they’re quickly stopped by Danio.

“Sorry kids, forgot you wouldn’t remember a Victor, would you?” Danio asked. “We’re not allowed down the beach tonight.”

“What? But everyone’s heading down to the beach,” Stone argued. “I thought we were celebrating Dunnage winning?”

“We are,” Danio agreed, “But, uh, there’s going to be Capitol reporters down there, and cameras, and the peacekeepers will just send us back ‘cos we don’t look like how the Capitol wants to believe District 4 looks. So we’ll celebrate seperately at the docks, alright?”

“We’re not allowed to celebrate having a Victor because we look poor?” Candiru asked. “What would they have done if Altum had won? Barred our family from the beach, too?” Danio flinched, but shook his head.

“Sorry, I really am, but best not to waste your time. Next time wear your Reaping clothes and wash just before the final battle and you might have a better chance,” Danio offered. “Come on, we’ll have fun without them.”

When Careen had won when they were four, they had been too little to really understand what was going on, but now they’re old enough to understand and play along, the party actually was really fun. There was no underlying tension or misery as with the post-reaping parties, where one, but more likely two, children had just been condemned and they were celebrating that it wasn’t them, now they’re celebrating that Dunnage made it out alive. Celebrating that they were going to get a child back for once, celebrating in the knowledge that soon the Capitol would send packages of treats and luxuries they could never afford otherwise. Danio leads the singing, taking their neighbours through his long repettoir of shanties, encouraging Tali to sing with him, even trying to push Tali to lead a song himself, although Tali shrinks away and refuses to do so. The alcohol flows like water down a stream, and people party long into the night. Even when Ray and Shad give up and go to bed, they can still hear the celebrations continue until the sun starts rising in the morning.

When morning comes, all the adults are too hungover to do much other than groan in their beds, so Ray takes Shad off to sneak down to the town to try and get Jonah to come out and play with them before Shad goes off to sea again. Not to mention, as a town kid, Jonah probably would have been allowed down to the beach to celebrate last night, and Ray wanted to know what had happened, what had been so special that they weren’t allowed to join in.

But the town is very different that morning.

There’s a normal degree of bustle in the town, of people going about their business, buying what they need, sometimes buying a treat or two, too, but the town is packed, every pathway covered in strangely dressed and strangely speaking people, too high pitched and too garish for locals. Capitol tourists, then, not uncommon in Summer, but usually it takes a few days for the crowds to become this busy after the Games. Mom always said the Capitol throws huge, lavish parties for days after the end of the Games, so why are there so many people here?

They find Jonah soon enough, playing in the garden behind his house, while the jewellry shop is completely packed with tourists gawking over the jewellry. Ray greets Jonah with a hug, which Jonah returns, before Jonah and Shad have an awkward moment where they try to figure out how they’re meant to greet each other, eventually settling on a hand-shake.

“Be careful, Shad,” Ray warned. “You don’t want to give Jonah ways to tell us two apart, do you?”

“No way,” Shad agreed. “Next time I’ll greet him by kissing him, then.”

“Eww. No,” Ray insisted, rolling his eyes. Jonah’s garden was weird, all grass with a little bench and a few smattering of flowers, completely different to Aki’s flowerpot garden that flowed all over the front of the house. It didn’t look pretty to Ray, although apparently Jonah’s Dad was ‘very proud’ of it, for some reason or another. At least it was decent for playing games in, as Jonah brought out a ball that they kicked about together. “What with all the people anyway, Jonah? Never seen this many tourists this early.”

“It’s because of Dunnage. Now we’ve got a new Victor, District 4 is the hottest place to be. All the tourists want to be here, buying our stuff. Fish prices will probably go up, too, with increased demand. Mommy says she loves it when we get a new Victor because we make so much more money.”

“What, you mean because Dunnage won, people will spend more on fish? Why?” Shad asked.

“Because the Capitol wants to eat more fish because its the cool thing to do, but if there’s not enough fish, people will pay more to buy it. Supply and demand,” Jonah explained. “It’s basic business.”

“We don’t learn ‘business’ on the boats,” Shad explained. “Not unless you’re the skipper. I don’t even know if most boats will even pay the fishermen more if the price of fish goes up.”

Jonah scowled. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“Because most boat owners just want to keep as much money as possible? Dad’s lucky, ‘cos he’s friends with Nangra, and Nangra and Danio share the profits on their boat out evenly among the whole crew, but no-one else does,” Shad explained. “Johnny said that he gets paid a set amount and only if they bring back the quota of fish, if they bring back even just a kilo less they only get half the pay.”

“Well, that is how wages work…” Jonah offered.

“Nuh-uh. Aki said, at her parents shop, she used to get paid hourly for making the dresses. She said that’s wages. She said what fishermen get paid is ‘barely a pittance with pitiful bonuses’, not wages.”

“People are always saying things down the dockyards, aren’t they?” Jonah muttered. “Who was it who was singing the victory song last night, anyway? We could hear him from two streets over from the Justice Square, he was very loud.”

“Victory song?” Shad asked. “You mean ‘Old Maui?’”

“Mommy just said its the song we always sing when we get a Victor, I didn’t know it had a name.”

“It’s sung at the end of long voyages, too,” Shad explained. “Dad says its about an island far off in the ocean that sunk years ago, said he thinks a lot of people from there got moved to what became District 4 ‘cos of people wanting to go there for parties and relaxing. But we just use it to mean going home.”

“Danio was the singer, he’s good, isn’t he?” Ray asked.

“Is he the singer that Mira Gansey left home to go marry?” Jonah asked.

“Who’s that?” Ray asked.

“Mommy says she was the tailor’s daughter, best seamstress the District had ever seen, but she fell in love with a fisherman ‘cos he sang really well and ran away from home to live down the dockyards instead,” Jonah explained. “Mommy keeps telling me if I’m not careful I’ll turn out like her, penniless and miserable.”

“Aki says she changed her name when she moved down to the dockyards,” Shad noted to Ray. “So probably, ‘cos Aki’s a really good seamstress too. But Aki’s not miserable, she says she might have been forced down to the dockyards but she stays by choice because she prefers living with us over living with the townfolk. Says we’re better.”

“I think everyone thinks that about their neighbours, though,” Jonah countered.

“Yeah, but our neighbours have never thrown you out of their shop just ‘cos you look poor,” Shad insisted. “And speaking of, did you get to go down to the beach last night to celebrate? We weren’t allowed. Too poor, again.”
Jonah winced, but nodded. “Yeah, it was really good. The Figurehead’s brought out their portable ice cream machine and were selling ice cream for cheap, and the Fathom’s were handing out sweets too. There were Capitol reporters recording the celebrations, but they kept getting annoyed at all the noise coming from the Dockyards messing up their shots.”

“Well if they invited us for free ice cream and sweets, maybe we would have been quiet,” Ray insisted.

“You don’t even like sweets,” Jonah countered.

“No, but some of our neighbours do,” Ray insisted. They kicked the ball around in quiet for a moment longer, before Ray asked, “Do the Fathom’s feel at all guilty?”

“Guilty?” Jonah asked. “What for?”

“For getting Rode killed. She was made to volunteer in River’s place, right?”

“They didn’t get her killed,” Jonah insisted. “That was the two from District 1.”

“If they hadn’t bought Rode out to volunteer for their daughter, she would never have volunteered at all. Don’t they feel guilty that she’s dead?” Ray asked, to which Jonah shook his head.

“They just think they’re doing whatever they can to protect their daughter. They’re more annoyed than anything, because Dunnage was meant to volunteer for their son, not for me. They’re having an argument with my parents that my parents owe them money because he stepped in for me, since now they’ll have to pay for two replacements to make sure neither of their kids are reaped.”

“Wow, and that’s what passes as nice to you, is it?” Shad asked, to which Jonah scoffed.

“Don’t act so high and mighty, Shad, your parents did the same for you.”

The comment hits Shad like a punch, making him physically recoil while Ray cringed, Shad kicking the ball to the far side of the garden. “At least my parents would in fact give a shit if Ray died.”

Jonah gasped, “You’re not meant to say swear words, especially not near my parents,” Jonah insisted, glancing back towards the house.

“What? Not meant to say shit, fuck, piss, arse, crap, damn, dick or cunt?” Shad asked as Jonah winced. “So it’s fine to say things like, ‘Oh, let’s buy a little orphan girl to die in place of our precious rich girl’, but it’s not right to say ‘fuck you, you rich bastards’?”

“Shad,” Jonah hissed. “Stop, you’ll get me in trouble.”

“Stop with the sailor mouth, Shad,” Ray insisted. “Jonah’s parents really will get mad.”

“Fine! Me and my sailor mouth and my poor clothes are going home. Knew the rich kids were more trouble than they’re worth,” Shad spat, making his way to the garden gate. “Are you coming or not, Ray?”

Ray glanced between Shad, still visibly fuming, and Jonah, staring at him imploringly to not leave, and winced, whispering to Jonah, “He goes to sea tomorrow, I’ll see you again then, okay?” before following Shad out of the garden. Once out of earshot of Jonah, Ray whispered to him, “Not used to seeing you get so angry, you know. Are you alright?”

“Rode and Dunnage aren’t worth less than River or her brother just because they don’t have parents,” Shad insisted. “They didn’t deserve to get sent to the Games, either!”

“I know, Shad.”

“And it’s bullshit that the rich kids from the town get to go enjoy things we don’t just because they’re rich and we’re poor.”

“Shad, don’t swear around the tourists,” Ray hissed, glancing at where some Capitolites were stood looking in the shop window just a few feet away.

“And it’s bull- and it’s bad that you’re exempt from the vitriol I get just because you go to your stupid school, too! I hate it! I hate it! Why couldn’t we just keep going to the same school together and never have to learn how this district works!”

Ray flinched, which Shad noticed, wrapping an arm around Ray. “Sorry, I’m not mad at you, I’m not, it’s just-”

“Hey!” A voice called out, as Shad and Ray paused, watching as a peacekeeper, fully decked out in their white gear and helmet pulled down over their eyes walked up to them, gun held in their hands. “Keep it moving, no waiting around.”

“We were just talking,” Shad insisted, but the peacekeeper wasn’t having it, stepping forward, bringing his gun up, to which both Ray and Shad backpedalled away from.

“I said, get lost. The fine people here don’t want to see the likes of you in these streets. Get moving.”

“We were going home anyway,” Ray assured him, grabbing Shad’s hand. “Come on, Shad.” Ray pulled Shad along behind him back towards the dockyards, away from the town, the crowds of tourists having barely reacted to two young teenagers getting threatened for just talking near them. Ray’s hands were shaking and he could feel Shad’s palms were sweaty too. They had never been threatened so directly by a peacekeeper before. “Still exempt, am I?” Ray whispered to Shad, who bit his lip.

They tried to skirt around the crowds, but with how heavy the foot traffic around the town was, it was difficult to fully avoid them, and Ray kept catching snippets of conversation as he passed by. Mostly people were chatting about the Games, about Dunnage’s victory, but one sentiment kept getting repeated, over and over and over again.

“I can’t believe that final fight was so quick! I wanted it to be more drawn out! What a let down!”

Dunnage had been poisoned. That last shot of Dunnage, blood seeping from his eyes as the poison worked its way through his system made Ray feel sick with disgust, and yet the tourists wanted him to fight for longer? Shad was absolutely right.

This was all bullshit.

Chapter Text

The Capitol announced that the crowning would take place in a week.

Most of the boats took the opportunity to get a quick trip in, so Shad was whisked off to sea by Dad, and the dockyards felt mostly empty with so many boats out at the same time. Usually there would be at least a few boats in the docks on any given day, but that first day it was almost desolate.

Ray went to go play with Jonah again a few times, although the first day was awkward, with how angry Shad had gotten with Jonah the day before.

“I’m not happy that Rode’s dead either, you know,” Jonah insisted. “Just glad I didn’t have to die in the Games. Although, with Dunnage winning, it makes me wonder if I would’ve been alright if I went, too.”

“Yeah right,” Ray scoffed, shoving Jonah. “You can’t climb trees like Dunnage, and you can’t fight as well as him, either. You’d be too young to join the career pack; don’t fool yourself. You wouldn’t be Dunnage in that Arena, you’d be the girl from 12. Starving to death until the eventual Victor killed you.”

“Can’t you have a little faith in me?” Jonah asked, to which Ray snorted as an answer.

Jonah was free to play most days. It seems the endless attention he was receiving from his parents had found its end after all; the second the tourists descended upon the District, they were too busy running the shop of making new jewellery to dote on Jonah any more, and with the town so full of tourists, the shops were always too busy for Ray and Jonah to go out to get sweets or ice-cream, so they found themselves in-land more often than not, playing with Zabra far from the Capitolites that had descended upon the seafront. Keeli was always too busy with her job at Miss Sennit’s shop to come out and play, but that doesn’t stop them from calling on her everyday just in case.

The orphanage itself is a miserable looking building, with areas of wall and roofing clearly needing repairing, and a paved yard out front surrounded by sharp fencing, keeping a crowd of miserable faces from leaving. But there is a face Ray recognises.

“Allis!” He yells to her, watching as Allis looked up from the book she was reading, and quickly making her way over to the fence to join them. “Is Keeli about?”

“She’s at work,” Allis explained. “Sorry.”

“Aww,” Jonah complained. “She’s always at work, she’s never free to play.”

“Some of us have responsibilities, you know,” Allis insisted. “She’s really busy at the moment, she comes back really late and just sleeps, what with all the tourists.”

“Hey, I help at our shop, too!” Jonah insisted. Allis raised her eyebrows at him, before turning back to Ray.

“Can I help you instead?” She asked, to which Ray shook his head.

“We wanted to see if Keeli was free to come play. But I suppose you could come play with us, if you want?” Ray offered, to which Allis shook her head.

“Got some important reading to do, and I’m back at work tomorrow, so thanks, but no thanks.”

“What are you reading?” Ray asked. “Looks big and dull to me.”

“It is a bit,” Allis agreed. “But the staff here are determined that Twait’s just being awkward and I know he’s not, so I’m doing some reading, hoping to find what is wrong with Twait. Seine reckons he’s just sad about Dunnage and Rode, but he was sick before the Reaping too, so it can’t be that.”

“Why would he be sad about Dunnage, anyway?” Jonah asked. “Dunnage won.”

“Twait and Dunnage always had this sort of… understanding between them. Because Clew and Seine don’t have any other family, and Dunnage and Twait both had little sisters, so they would team up to make sure Rode and I were taken care of. Twait’s always been closer with Seine, but he always used to joke that him and Dunnage were allies, facing against the enemy that is the staff here. And now he’s lost that.”

“How is Twait doing?” Ray asked. “Last I saw him he looked rough.”

“Rough’s… a nice way to put it, I suppose. He’s struggling to just get out of bed or to talk to people, even to me. He keeps getting into trouble because he won’t go out to work, so he keeps missing meals, and he doesn’t even seem to care. I- I’m really worried about him, Ray. I don’t know what to do to help him.”

Allis ran her hand across her eyes, but nothing could hide the redness they had, and Ray reached through the fence to squeeze her shoulder. “Shad always says you’re the smartest fishcutter in existence, so if anyone could figure it out, it’ll be you. Twait’s lucky to have you, you know.”

Allis laughed, a tiny, quiet laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. “He says it too, when he’s up to talking. But I’m luckier to have him. I should get back to my book, there’s a lot to read through.”

“You know where to find me and Shad if you want to talk about things, Allis,” Ray assured her. “You’re one of us now, whether you like it or not, so we’ve gotta help you if you ask.”

“Thanks Ray,” Allis said with a forced smile, before heading back to where she had left her book.

As the day of the crowning drew nearer, the tourists became more excited, more rowdy. They lined up along the beach when the boats pulled back in with their catches, waving as the boats passed by, while the fishermen on board were much too busy preparing to pull into port to wave back. Ray met up with Shad as soon as he disembarked, watching the dock workers pull the fish out of the boat to be weighed and prepared for selling.

“I don’t know why they were waving at us,” Shad complained. “They’d be happier to see me in that Arena than to see me face-to-face, wouldn’t they?”

“Maybe it’s all a show, like how we’ve gotta dress up for Reaping day,” Ray offered, while Shad just shrugged.

“How’s your friend Jonah doing, by the way? Still getting upset over the wrong things?” Shad asked while Ray sighed.

“He was upset that you got so mad at him, his parents really do go nuts when people swear, you know, and Jonah gets into a lot of trouble for it even if he didn’t swear himself.”

“It’s just screwed up, their priorities,” Shad insisted. “You know it, too.”

“Yeah, I do, but Jonah’s parents are idiots, and he tries his best to keep in their good books, so please don’t go swearing near them again.”

“No promises, if they’re being idiots,” Shad warned.

“Jonah’s come down with a nasty cold, anyway. Mom reckons nasty bugs always spread around when we get a flood of tourists ‘cos they bring disease from the Capitol here. So he didn’t come out to play yesterday. His Mom reckons he might even be too ill to watch the crowning tonight.”

“Wonder what it’ll be like,” Shad pondered. “I don’t remember Careen getting crowned, do you?”

“Nope. I heard Betta explaining to the kids yesterday that they change it a little every year too, so who knows what they’ll do?”

Shad was exhausted from the fishing trip, so he heads home for a nap, while Ray plays down the beach alone, waiting for the hours to tick by before he can go home and watch the ceremony, only to be interrupted about an hour before its meant to start.

“Shad?” Candiru’s voice called out, and Ray turned to face her.

“Ray,” he corrected, and Candiru bit her lip.

“’Suppose you’ll do, too,” she shrugged, setting herself down in the sand beside him. “Not watching the crowning, either?”

“I will, it’s just not started yet, and I don’t want to go home when Shad’s asleep, Mom and Dad will try to get me to talk to them again,” Ray explained.

“It’s really fucked up what they asked you to do,” Candiru muttered. “Especially when they watched what happened to Altum…”

“It’s all fucked up,” Ray agreed. Dad always said you weren’t meant to swear in front of girls, and had scolded Ray and Shad both before for swearing in front of Candiru, but Candiru had as foul a mouth as any other fisherman, so the scoldings never stuck. “Is that why you don’t want to watch the crowning? Because of Altum?”

Candiru bit her lip, digging her feet into the sand. “I just can’t help but think it should have been Altum, wearing that crown, getting home, being rich. Instead Mom’s working two jobs and I still have to take tesserae just for us to make ends meet. I know you like Dunnage and all, but I wish Altum was our Victor, not him.”

Ray nodded slowly. “For what it’s worth, I’d rather Altum won than Dunnage, too. She’d be more likely to give us free food from her vast riches than Dunnage would.”

That at least made Candiru smile, as she wrapped her arms around her knees. “I just miss her so much. I had my first kiss recently at school, and my first thought was still ‘Wait until Altum hears about this!’, and it felt like I lost her all over again.”

Ray reached out to pat her, but Candiru shrugged his hand off of her shoulder. “I’m really sorry to hear it. I really am. I threw a stone and nearly hit a fish last week, and it reminded me of her so much I felt like someone had kicked me.”

Candiru gave a snort of a suffocated laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “That was such a stupid trick of hers, I hated it.”

They had been trying to fish with their poles down by the docks when they were maybe six years old, when Altum had walked up to them, offering to help, only to grab the biggest rock she could find and throw it at the fish, chasing them all away. When Candiru had yelled at her, Altum insisted she was trying to bludgeon one to death instead. Altum repeated the ‘trick’ a few times to annoy them, always laughing at them, only ever tricking them when she knew there was plenty of food at home for them all.

“Are you wanting to watch the crowning with us?” Ray offered. “It’s mandatory viewing, I don’t think they’ll let you skip it.” Candiru shook her head.

“I think Mom, Zamurito and I are just gonna turn the volume off and pretend to watch instead,” Candiru explained. “I just hope Barra doesn’t try to get into the house again.”

“You call your Dad by his first name?” Ray asked, to which Candiru’s lip curled.

“He’s no ‘dad’ of mine. He wants to be called dad, he can earn it,” she snapped.

Ray ended up walking Candiru to her house, saying a quick farewell to her while trying to steel himself to go back to his own home, where Shad had since woken up from his nap, still visibly tired but keen to watch the crowning, sat snuggled up next to Ray on the floor while their parents got the sofa. Dinner had consisted of fish Mom had caught, with vegetables she’d swapped more fish for from Aki.

“Can’t wait for the parcels to arrive,” Dad muttered. “It’d be nice to have some treats again. Nice to see what we can do with them, now we actually have the money to make them spread the whole month.”

“What’s in the parcels?” Shad asked.

“Varies from month to month. Canned fish in winter, chocolates in the spring, all sorts of delicacies we usually wouldn’t buy, because they cost more than what they’re worth to us,” Dad explained.

“There’s usually sweets in the parcels too, but we can just swap them to someone with a sweet tooth, get something better in exchange,” Mom explained. “But we’ll see what we get and make plans from there.”

The anthem played over the TV, and they all lapsed into silence, watching as Caesar Flickerman bounced onto the stage to the cheers of the crowd, leading them on into applause for the gamemakers and through the prep teams.

“Who are they, again?” Shad asked, as the prep team bobbed and bowed on stage.

“They clean up the tributes and get them ready for the stylists,” Ray explained. “They shave you if you’re hairy, too. They don’t want you to have a beard.”

“That’s weird,” Shad snorted. “What’s wrong with a beard?”

“The Capitol doesn’t like a beard,” Ray explained. “Don’t ask me why.”

Saffron was called up on stage next, beaming ear to ear, curtseying to the crowd before leaving once more, and then it was the mentors turns, with Mags and Jib walking onto stage, arm in arm, bright smiles on both of their faces as they held hands and bowed to rapturous applause, with even Mom and Dad applauding them.

“Told you, Mags is one of our Victors,” Ray teased Shad.

“You thought Mags wasn’t one of ours?” Dad asked.

“She’s always mentoring for District 12, why would I?” Shad asked.

“She’s married to one of our neighbours,” Dad insisted. “Mako Flannagan; Nangra and I used to tease him mercilessly for being so obviously in love with her.”

“What? I didn’t know that,” Ray muttered. Why hadn’t anyone mentioned it? And why hadn’t they seen Mako down the docks?

“They’ve kept to themselves since they lost their son,” Mom said softly. “Poor things. Used to be Mako was down the docks every weekend, showing Roger how to fish, taking him out on the boats, keeping his family legacy alive. They’ve still got nieces down here, though. Epaulette says she gets invited to their house for a family meal nearly every week.”

“What happened to their son?” Shad pushed.

“He was reaped,” Dad explained quietly. “In the thirty-fifth games, suppose you two were too young to really remember them. Losing a child to the Games would break anyone, but losing your only child to the Games as a mentor has to be a special kind of hell.”

No wonder she always looked so sad, although right now, taking her seat on the stage, she looked pretty happy. Maybe trying to get tributes home was her way of coping with losing her son. The crowd was being shushed once more as Caesar took to the stage once more.

“This year, we have a Victor that we can truly say is like no other. Every one of our previous Victors, they wanted only to survive, to get home, to win. But Dunnage, our dear, dear Dunnage, he wanted only for his sister to get home. We hoped with him. We mourned with him. His loss truly is one of our own. But tonight, let us celebrate with him. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Victor of the 42^nd Games. From District 4, Dunnage Tender!”

Dunnage walks out onto stage, waving to the crowds, dressed in a suit made of seashells that looked wildly uncomfortable, but there was something altogether wrong about him. The layer of baby fat that had plagued him all the years Ray knew him had been lost, yet he looked younger than ever, his face pale and thin, clearly still ravaged by illness from the poison Reed had used against him. And there was a deep grief swimming in his eyes, threatening to spill over already. He hadn’t wanted to be there at all. He’d volunteered in the belief that he was going to die, going to do everything to get his sister home, and now he’d have to live the rest of his life without her.

“Do you think they told him?” Dad whispered, but Ray and Shad could hear him clearly.

“I hope they didn’t. I hope they won’t,” Mom replied.

They ushered Dunnage to a seat, a throne of sorts, to sit upon for the viewing of the tape, which Dunnage takes very quickly, settling into it as they start the tape viewing, starting at the reaping itself. The story they tell this year is simple, and heartbreaking. Of an older brother so dedicated to keeping his little sister safe, he risks the ultimate sacrifice to get her home, willingly heading into the Arena, his motives laid clear for everyone to remember. Dunnage didn’t want to live. Dunnage wanted Rode to live. Dunnage was going to do everything to get her home.

Every clip they show seems to emphasise that point, wanting to hammer it home, each reminder felt like a hook digging into Ray’s ribs, knowing what he did, and he can see the feeling mirrored in Shad’s face. They show Dunnage keeping Rode safe, snuggling her for comfort, waking her from nightmares.

And then they show Reed poisoning the animal with the rabid poison, only for it to recover and go back to normal behaviour within three hours.

Dunnage frowns at the sight, clearly recognising something in it, but shakes it clear from his head, watching instead as Fern attacked Rode, watched himself snap, mortally wounding her, but not giving her the benefit of a quick death for hurting Rode. Watches Fern and Reed team up. Watches his allies find Fern.

Watches her explain about the rabid poison.

Watches them put the poison in Rode’s food.

Dunnage’s face falls as he watches Rode respond to the poison, watches himself try to fight her off as his allies demand he kill her, his breathing getting heavy, his eyes wide, glancing to something else on stage, shaking his head. Shad’s hand finds itself in Ray’s, squeezing each other for comfort, as Dunnage realises, in front of the entire country, just what had happened.

Rode hadn’t gone rabid.

Rode would have survived.

He killed Rode for no reason.

“No,” Dunnage whimpered out as the parachute arrives. “No, no,” they clearly show the girl from 1 swapping Mags’ message of ‘wait’ with a message of ‘kill’ instead. “No, no no no no…” They show Dunnage’s torn feelings, show him turning the trident around, show him running Rode through with it. “NO! No no no no no no no no no!”

Something shatters in Dunnage, there and then on the screen, as he brings his knees up to his chest on the throne, screaming in horror as he watches himself needlessly murder his own dear sister, the screams piercing Ray’s ears, the sound coming from the TV clipped and messy, too loud, too high pitched, and Dunnage seems completely lost in his grief, screaming as every camera is focused on him in that moment, yet he’s too far gone to care.

But there’s other movement on the stage. It takes a moment for Ray to realise what is happening, because the view is so suddenly obscured, but they try to swap the cameras around for a better view, to see Dunnage again as he continues to scream, tears streaming down his eyes, his hands gripping the thing that had suddenly obscured the cameras, and Ray finally recognises what it is.

Mags.

Mags had leapt from her seat, had forced herself between Dunnage and the cameras, wrapping him up in her arms as he continued screaming in his mind-numbing panic, her hands trying to soothe him, trying to calm him, squeezing him tight, while the rest of her body stood between Dunnage and the cameras, keeping him just out of view. If it weren’t for his screaming sobs, Ray would have had no idea what he was doing. It didn’t stop the cameras from trying to get a shot of him, but Mags seemed determined to block any and every view of him from them. Stopping them from getting exactly what they wanted: Dunnage’s suffering for entertainment.

She stays there the rest of the viewing, Dunnage’s sobbing still audible throughout, and even once the recap is finished, she continues to block the view of Dunnage, even when Caesar steps towards her, trying to usher her away so they can finally crown Dunnage. Her voice is caught on the microphone.

“You got your pound of flesh, got your entertainment. Let the boy mourn,” she demanded, pushing Caesar away, even as the crowd got rowdy, wanting the crowning to commence. More people stepped onto the stage, trying to usher her off too, and when that doesn’t work, they practically drag Mags away, Dunnage reaching out for her still even as she’s escorted away, his eyes bright red, puffy with tears. President Snow takes to the stage, with Dunnage barely even acknowledging him, still trying to reach for Mags, the crown placed onto his head, a muted applause arising from the audience, while Dunnage jumps from his seat to reach Mags once more, throwing himself into her arms, the cameras once more focused on him, trying to show his tears as Mags tries once more to shield him from them.

It’s the last shot they show of him, in front of the entire Capitol, sobbing into Mags’ arms, before the seal of Panem appears once more, and the TV gets switched off by Dad. Ray feels like they should be cheering, should be hearing the cheering from their neighbours, but instead its just deathly silent down the dockyards.

The silence seems to carry on into the morning, too. No-one feels much like celebrating, having watched Dunnage suffer what could only be the worst day of his life, in a life so filled with grief and misery. Losing his parents, losing his sister, and then finding out he’d been tricked into killing her… it had to be unbearable.

Ray and Shad end up playing down the beach with Stone and Candiru the next day, waiting for the interview to start, but still its quiet. The tourists were no doubt celebrating loud and fast on the tourist beach the far side of town, but here, people were still too shocked to talk about it. It felt like Dunnage’s hysterical screams were still echoing in Ray’s mind, and he could see on everyone’s faces that they were still echoing in theirs, too.

When the interview was due to start again, Ray and Shad made their way to Stone’s house to watch it, but there’s very little to watch. Dunnage remains wrapped up in Mags’ arms throughout the questions, barely answering any of them, tears still streaming down his face. He doesn’t look like a Victor, he barely even looks like a teenager. Just some traumatised child, wishing to be home. Mags has to answer most of the questions posed to him, with Dunnage only managing to croak out a few short answers every now and then, to questions so far detached from him or Rode that they might as well be answered by a stranger. Any time Caesar attempts to ask anything remotely related to Rode, Dunnage burries his head into Mags’ arms and disappears from the interview again. Mags never complains. Never scolds. She holds him tight, runs a hand through his hair, and answers another question.

Three hours of questions, and the amount of talking Dunnage does could barely fill half an hour.

When at last its over, Stone’s Dad turns off the TV, and they sit on the floor, staring at the screen. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Victor give an interview like that before,” Stone said quietly, and Ray and Shad had to agree. Normally the Victors could manage to at least answer some of the questions related to their kills, but Dunnage could barely do more than discuss the food he ate without disappearing into Mags’ arms again.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Games like that one, to be fair,” Stone’s Dad offered. “I mean, they’re brutal, don’t get me wrong, but to trick someone into killing their own sister…”

“Poor Dunnage,” Shad muttered. “Will he even want to come home, after all of that?”

“He’ll at least get to go home to Victor’s Village, to live near Mags,” Stone’s dad offered. “Rather than the orphanage.”

“All his friends are still at the orphanage, though,” Ray explained. “He’s practically losing his entire family all over again.”

“And Allis says, even if his friends wanted to move in with him, they have to stay at the orphanage until they’re eighteen, or they’ll be accused of breaching the contract the orphanage signed on their behalf to get them into the Academy, and they’ll get arrested,” Shad explained. “Dunnage can’t win anything except the Hunger Games, can he?”

“It’s the only thing he didn’t want to win, too,” Ray agreed.

There’s a letter waiting when they return home for Ray, from the Academy, requesting he turn up at the school the next day in uniform so as to attend the ceremony to greet their new Victor. Shad doesn’t get an invite, muttering curses under his breath instead.

“You can still go, Shad,” Mom insisted. “You just need to wear your reaping clothes and stay near the back of the crowd. You could go with Stone and Candiru!”

“Candiru won’t want to go,” Shad insisted. “If she didn’t want to watch the crowning or the interview she won’t want to go. And its not right leaving her all alone here, anyway. We’ll go out fishing instead.”

The train isn’t due to arrive back in the district until late afternoon, so Ray joins Shad, Stone and Candiru the next morning. Shad uses the family trident, leaving Ray to keep watch for peacekeepers, but at least Shad manages to catch two fish, offering to lie and tell their parents Ray caught one of them, but Ray can’t see much of a point to it. What did their parents care if they caught a fish each, or Shad caught two anyway?

After lunch Ray dons his school uniform and makes his way to the Academy, watching the streets he passed fill with more and more people as he went, tourists jumping on the tram to get to the station. Every building he passed by was decorated to the nines, celebrating the return of their new Victor, banners and streamers and flags hanging out of windows, bright, colourful, a complete contrast to how Ray felt. Every face he saw as he passed was beaming, and yet, Dunnage wouldn’t be.

He gets to the school early: too early, in fact, as there’s barely anyone else there, but if he’d left home any later he would have been late instead, so he finds a bench to sit on and wait for his friends to arrive, watching as other students slowly trickled through the gates, bright smiles on all their faces too. Ray’s almost glad to find Dunnage’s friends, since they’re the only ones not smiling, and he rushes over to greet them.

“Twait! Seine! Clew!” He yells, all three of them stopping to let him catch up. “Looking forward to seeing Dunnage again?”

“’Course,” Clew agreed, although the grimmace on his face said otherwise. “Just wish I didn’t know just how torn up by all this he’s going to be.”

“They usually let the family up on the platform to greet the new Victor, but we’re not allowed up there,” Seine stated, rolling his eyes. “We’ve been staking out the quickest route from the station to Victor’s village ever since Dunnage won, though, so we’re just going to chase him home instead.”

“What’s going to happen to Rode’s body?” Ray asked, to which Seine and Clew frowned, but Twait fidgetted where he stood. “Candiru said when Altum was brought home, Mags brought her back and paid for a set of clothes for her to be buried at sea in. What happens to in-land kids?”

“Varies from family to family,” Twait explained, a sparkle in his eyes that Ray hadn’t seen for some time. “Water cremation used to be the most popular back when my parents were still alive, but its mostly burial or flame cremation now. If people can’t afford a proper disposal, the government will take the remains away, but people really don’t like that happening, as you can imagine. Dockyard and some town families throw the bodies overboard, right?”

“Burial at sea,” Ray corrected. “We’ve got a few communal coffins for carrying the body to the boat, and we wrap the bodies in old sailcloth if we can find it, weighed down with rocks. What’s water cremation?”

“You mix chemicals in water with a body and apply heat, and it burns away all the flesh, leaving the bones. People like to keep at least one bone, keep part of the deceased with them,” Twait explained, scoffing when Ray pulled a face. “Come on, be polite about it at least.”

“Do you have your parents bones?” Ray asked, to which Twait grimmaced.

“Ray, kid, come on, show some manners, will you?” Clew asked. “We’d all love to keep a bone each of our parents, but the district doesn’t listen to the wishes of orphans. The government took our parents bodies away, all of them. We’ve got nothing left from them.”

“Nothing but memories,” Twait agreed quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Ray said quietly, to which Twait shook his head.

“Look, your friends are here, so why don’t you go talk with them instead of us? They’ll be less miserable.”

Ray waved them a quick good-bye, before rushing over to meet with Jonah, Zabra and Keeli, all of whom were smiling and happy at least, and around them Ray could at least fake a good mood.

“Can you believe it?” Keeli asked. “Another Victor! We’ll have volunteers again next year!”

“No more losing our friends and neighbours to the reaping!” Zabra agreed.

“And all that extra money, too!” Jonah agreed.

“Yeah, woo,” Ray said half-heartedly. “Money the rest of us aren’t going to see, Jonah.”

“But we’ll all get the packages,” Jonah insisted. “With the sweets-”

“-That my family don’t like.”

“-And the tinned fish-”

“-When we prefer kippers.”

“Ray,” Jonah stopped, waiting for Ray to turn and look at him. “There’s no need to be such a downer. We’ve got a new Victor! It’s good news! Dunnage survived!”

“Not good news for Dunnage, though,” Ray reminded him. “Dunnage wanted Rode to win, not him.”

“I’m sure getting to live and enjoy the winnings would have been his second choice, anyway. Who would ever be miserable at all that money and attention?” Jonah asked, and Ray frowned.

“Jonah, did you actually watch the crowning ceremony?”

“No, I was too sick, why?”

The school bell rang before Ray could answer, could tell Jonah what had actually happened when Dunnage realised what it had taken for him to win, and he made a mental note to tell Jonah later, instead lining up with the rest of his class while their teachers explained what to do when they got to the train station. They didn’t want a homogenous crowd of school children making the crowd look artificial, they had to break up into small groups and disperse into the crowd, blending in, cheering for Dunnage, and once the crowd started to disperse, they were just to head home, not back to the school. With instructions conveyed, they were lead out of the school yard, year group by year group, with the youngest kids going first.

It wasn’t a long journey, but the station was filled with tourists already by the time they arrived; Jonah had to grab Ray’s hand, and Ray had to grab Keeli in turn, dragging each other through the tight crowds to find a good spot. They found themselves stuck behind a rowdy crowd of Capitolites, already swaying where they stood as if drunk, just as the train pulled into the station, the crowd picking up the volume, chanting louder and louder and louder. The train stopped, yet the door didn’t open, the crowd chanting Dunnage’s name, over and over and over, and it was impossible to not be caught up in the frenzy, to not cheer along, to not celebrate, and when the train door opened, the cheering reached a fever pitch.

Out the door first came Jib, his short black hair tinged with grey, turning around to help the next person out of the train, as Mags came out, stress wrinkles visible on her forehead, more visible than the laugh lines, and she stepped out, clearing the doorway for the third and final exiter, as Dunnage stepped onto the platform to ravenous cheering.

He waved at the crowd, a fake smile on his face, real tears in his eyes, as the crowd chanted his name at him, welcoming him home, greeting him as a Victor, their Victor, their newest Victor, but Ray couldn’t pull his eyes from the red eyes and fake smile. Dunnage may be a Victor, but there was no joy in the title, no warm return to his family, just a cold, lonely misery and an empty home to move into, with barely any belongings to bring with him. Not even a single momento of his family.

Ray finally looked away, feeling too overwhelmed by the misery on Dunnage’s face, focusing instead on the joy on Jonah’s face, and Jonah must have seen him staring out of the corner of his eye, as he turned to Ray with a smile.

“Bet it feels great, being up there,” Jonah exclaimed. “Everyone chanting your name, everyone welcoming you home! I bet it’s the best feeling in the world!”

Ray couldn’t answer. What could he say? No doubt it had to be the worst feeling in the world to Dunnage. A pain and misery he couldn’t even begin to imagine, to lose a sibling, to know it was all your own fault, to know you had to live with that pain for ever more…

No. It had to be the worst feeling anyone could ever feel. To lose everything, and have no hope of ever getting it back…

It had to be the worst feeling…

Chapter Text

Someone was knocking at their front door.

Just yesterday Dunnage had returned to the District, and Ray and Shad had slept in, knowing Shad would be back at sea tomorrow, meaning it was their last chance to get a good night’s sleep in together, so they were sat eating breakfast when the knocking occurred, turning to look at each other with confused glances.

“Who knocks on the door?” Ray asked. All their neighbours would just yell to get their attention, knowing the walls were thin enough to be heard, and their friends would just let themselves in.

“It’s gotta be one of your friends, town people would think it rude to barge in,” Shad shrugged. Ray slid out of his seat to answer the door, recognising the sea green eyes staring back at him from the other side.

“Twait?!” Ray asked. “Uh, fancy seeing you here?”

“Uh, yeah, hi,” Twait agreed, scratching at his chin and glancing further into the shack where Shad was sat eating breakfast. For a moment, neither of them said anything, until Shad piped up.

“That’s Ray by the door, I’m Shad and I’m eating breakfast, want some?” Shad offered.

“No thanks, I already ate,” Twait waved him off. “Sorry, I’m not here too early in the morning, am I?”

“It’s eight,” Ray assured him. “We slept in.”

“Wow, really pushing the boat out, staying in bed until eight, aren’t you?” Twait teased. “Uh, look, sorry to disturb you, but I need some help and you’re, like, the only person I know from down the dockyards, so I thought I’d give you guys a shot. Do you have any idea how I might charter a boat?”

“Charter a boat?” Shad asked. “What’chu wanna do that for, lubber? Have you even been to sea before?”

“No, and it’s not for me,” Twait insisted. “It’s for Dunnage. For Rode. Zander and Scud brought her body along to Victor’s Village last night, but Dunnage is… uh… well, he isn’t in a place to care for her, so he asked me to do it. And I want to do it right. We can’t do a water cremation, so I suggested to Dunnage we bury her at sea, since she loved to come down to the beach to watch the fish whenever Dunnage could bring her down here, and he agreed. So I need a boat. And I don’t know how to get one.”

“Well, neither do we,” Ray shrugged. “I mean, we’re thirteen.”

“Bet Mom would know,” Shad suggested. “It’s mostly moms and wives and daughters who deal with dead bodies down the dockyards. Mom says it’s because men are too weak to work when they’re grieving. But Mom’s gone fishing and she won’t be back until this evening.”

“Great. Who else, then?” Twait asked, to which Ray and Shad thought hard.

“I bet Nangra would know,” Shad offered. “I mean, Nangra knows everything about the dockyards. He’s practically in charge down here.”

“Yeah, the Mayor might have the money and the peacekeepers, but down here, Nangra calls the shots,” Ray agreed. “And he probably knows the people you have to ask about getting a boat, since he has a boat. Well, Danio does.”

“Why do I feel like I recognise those names?” Twait asked.

“They’re the ones who feed you fish despite not being from the dockyards, because they’re really soft for fishermen,” Ray explained. “Nangra even helped Allis collect money for Dunnage, he’s that soft. He’ll either know, or know who will know.”

“Great, where can I find him?”

“You just walk around shouting his name and he’ll pop up eventually,” Ray suggested. “Him or his son or daughter-in-law.”

“I am not walking around the streets this early in the morning shouting for a man I barely know,” Twait insisted.

“It’s not that early,” Ray insisted. “But fine, I’ll take you to his house.”

Shad threw back the last of his breakfast, rushing forward to join Ray and Twait as they exited the house and made their way through the streets, only half busy. Half the boats had left first thing this morning, but some stayed behind, staggering the departures to stop the docks getting too busy. Half-way to Nangra’s house, they ran into a familiar face, dressed in his swimming gear, holding his son’s hand.

“Danio!” Ray yelled out, with Danio stopping to smile at them, Tali hiding behind his leg. “Where’s your dad?”

“Should be at home, why? Oh, hello,” Danio greeted Twait. “You’re tall.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Twait scoffed.

“This is Allis’ older brother,” Shad explained, to which Danio’s jaw dropped.

“Allis?! As in,” He held his hand fairly low down beside his hip, “Allis?”

“She still has a lot of growing to do,” Twait agreed.

“What are you wanting to bet that he’s taller than your dad, Danio?” Ray asked. “Jonah reckons he has to be, but I know no-one’s taller than Nangra.”

“Nuh-uh. I’d lose that bet in a second. What on earth do they feed you in that orphanage, kid?! And how can I get some for myself?!”

“I’m from a tall family, good genetics,” Twait replied. He’d always been the tallest in his class ever since Ray first met him, but in the past year Twait had shot up even further, now amongst the tallest kids in school. Compared to the fishermen, a lot of whom had grown up half starved and unable to grow tall, he was practically a giant. “Come on then, Ray. Let’s keep moving, I’ve got other things to arrange too, you know.”

“Right, see you later Danio. Tali,” Ray waved good-bye, carrying onwards towards Nangra’s house, before he yelled outside the door. “Nangra! Are you free?”

“Just a minute, kiddo,” Nangra’s reply came, the front door opening a minute or so later as Nangra exited the house, a smile plastered across his face. “Morning, Odairs. And… well, that’s a familiar face and a half, isn’t it? The young Pall lad, right? Your sister shouldn’t be working today, right?”

“Wrong, she’s helping with the family business,” Twait explained. “Dunnage can’t bear to care for Rode himself, feels too guilty, so we’re doing it. I’m arranging the funeral, Allis is caring for the body. Ray reckons you might be able to help.”

Nangra gave a nod, waving Twait to follow him into the house, and with nowhere else to go, Ray and Shad followed behind, too.

Nangra’s house was as snug as the rest of them; a common area, with a small kitchen, dining table and sofa, plus two bedrooms coming off of it, made up the floorplan. In the corner of the common area was the hammock Nangra slept in, having declared that Tali should have his own room some months ago, rather than living in the master bedroom with his parents. It didn’t look very comfortable, but Dad had explained Nangra usually slept on the family boat instead of the shack anyway. The hammock was used when Nangra felt he was needed in the shack overnight, usually when Tali begged him to stay. The net Danio had made Aki was hung up across the ceiling, with the net Nangra had made his late wife across one of the walls, more worn than Danio’s net. Nangra indicated for Twait to sit at the table.

“Still remember the last time I saw your mother down here, kid. Nearly knocked me off my feet first time I saw your sister, you’ve both got her face, don’t you?”

“You knew my mother?” Twait asked, to which Nangra smiled.

“She was a few years younger than me, so we didn’t cross paths often, but I don’t forget a face easily. Always thought it was funny that she clearly won the argument on what to name the kids, with you and Allis being named after fish, and all. Surely your father wouldn’t have chosen them.”

“...Damn, you’re a bit creepy when you’re not serving us fish,” Twait complained, to which Nangra laughed, a loud belly laugh.

“I’ve been called worse. Got a good memory, is all. Helps keep everything running smoothly in the family and on the boat if you’ve got one person who just remembers everything you need.”

“You didn’t tell us your mom was from down the docks, Twait,” Ray complained, to which Twait turned around in his seat to give Ray an exasperated look.

“Why would I? No offence Ray, but we don’t chat that often.”

“Your sister asked us if we drown babies that are born different first time we met,” Shad insisted. “Why would she ask that of her own mother?”

Twait flinched, taking a deep breath before answering. “People weren’t… too friendly about Mom being from the dockyards. They used to say awful things about the dockyards around Allis and I to make us feel bad about having family from down here. Allis was only ten when our parents died, I’m not surprised she doesn’t remember how much those comments were pointed at us, rather than you.”

“Don’t think your father could have found a better life partner than your mother,” Nangra added. “Mahi always was a strange one. Used to collect fish bones, loved handling dead things. Not sure how she came across your father, but I do remember her gifting him numerous skeletons while flirting, and your grandmother complaining about him ‘enabling’ her. What a pair they were. It’s nice to see you carrying on their legacy.”

“Dad always said its never a chore. It’s always an honour to care for the dead, an honour to be given that access in such a heartbreaking time. And I want to do right for Rode and Dunnage,” Twait explained, to which Nangra nodded.

“So, what do you need me for?”

“Dunnage wants Rode committed to the sea, because she loved to watch the fish when he could find an excuse to sneak the two of them down to the beach. Allis is at home washing Rode, and I’ve gone and arranged to buy an old boat sail to wrap her in, but we need to charter a boat to take her out to sea, and I don’t know where to start with that. Ray and Shad suggested you might know.”

“I do know,” Nangra agreed. “Had to arrange it for three kids, one grandchild and my wife. You need to go ask at the docks proper, there’s offices beside the old warehouse your sister works in, and find someone willing to take her out on the day you want. It’s quite a long journey, knocks out any other work for the day, so its not particularly cheap, and they expect payment up front.”

Twait winced. “Yeah, I was worried about that. Dunnage doesn’t get his first lot of winnings until the day after the parcels arrive for the first time, but he really doesn’t want to wait another five days to inter her. Especially not in summer, and she’s already been dead for so long, and the orphanage gets all our pay, we literally have no money for anything. Can we commit her from land, by any chance?”

“Not unless you want her washing up on the beach in a day’s time,” Nangra shook his head. “How are you paying for the old sail?”

“Dunnage’s parents were ship builders, managed to convince their old boss to give us a torn sail that we’ll pay for next week, since he knows where Dunnage lives and can’t skip out on the bill. Any chance any ship owners would be willing to do something similar for us?”

Nangra sighed. “Why? How much are you paying?”

“Dunnage said money’s no issue. How much would it cost to charter a boat?”

“Depends on the boat. You want one of those fancy tourist boats, you’re probably looking in the thousands. Your parent’s old boat, they used that for free, since it was an old knackered beast and they owned it; they were always the cheapest to charter for a funeral, but I think that boat got scrapped years ago. The fishing boats aren’t glamorous, but they’ll do the job. Only issue is, half are already at sea, and the other half are planning to head out tomorrow, so you’ll be losing them a full day’s pay. You’re probably looking a good few hundred for one of them.”

“Up front?”

“Up front,” Nangra agreed. “But… Shit, yeah. I could probably get you a boat that’ll take payment when your friend has his money. Since I know where to track you, your friend, and your sister down to get it back.”

“Which boat’s that?” Twait asked.

“Salty Cairn. My son’s boat. Normally I’d only do it for dockyard folks but… I guess Allis is practically one of us now, and it only seems right to pay back your parent’s hard work by helping out their kid when he needs it.”

“And your son won’t be mad you’re making plans with his boat without his permission?” Twait prompted.

“Danio owns the boat, but I’m the captain. He just owns it so he doesn’t have to pay inheritance tax when I cork it,” Nangra explained. “And I raised him right. He’ll agree to help.”

“It would be very kind of you if you would help, thank you,” Twait said softly, to which Nangra smiled.

“What about all the extras? Got all that planned? Pallbearers all in agreement?”

“Rode’s friends are too little to carry her, so me, Seine, Clew and Dunnage are going to carry her, Jib and Mako agreed to help, too. Allis is going to lead the procession like we used to, with Rode’s friends, so they’re still involved. We won’t need more than six, she’s too little for more than that to even get around her comfortably.”

“The coffin?”

“The Capitol sent her home in one, we’re going to use that.”

“Clothes?”

“Allis is swapping her from the tribute clothes to some of her old clothes from home. We’ve got everything else, thanks, it’s just the boat we needed.”

“What about a singer?” Nangra asked, to which Twait paused, frowning.

“A singer? You don’t have a singer at a funeral.”

“We do,” Shad butted in. “Every funeral, Danio sings for everyone. He’s very good.”

“Just thought we should check if you want us to sing or not, so there’s no nasty surprises when the procession gets to the boat and there’s a damned trained operatic bass singer belting out a song about trying to kill yourself.”

“A song about what?” Twait asked incredulously.

“Well, about survivor’s guilt, really. About trying to take your own life, only to realise that your death is the last thing everyone who went before you wants. We sing it whenever we commit someone to the sea, Danio leads us, the rest sing chorus. Might be a good reminder for your friend.”

“I’ll… think about it. Would your boat be good to go tomorrow to take Rode out to her final rest?”

“Absolutely. Just give us a ring in the morning on the town phone to let us know if Danio’s to sing or not, and we’ll have everything ready with the boat. I promise.”

Nangra spent most of the rest of the day informing their neighbours about the plan with Rode, and as far as Ray could tell, no-one argued against an in-land orphan getting a sailor’s burial at sea. Maybe no-one felt right arguing against how to bury a child, or just the remaining trauma of watching Dunnage’s hysterical breakdown at the crowning was still playing too strongly in everyone’s minds. Or just no-one wanted to argue with Nangra. All were equally possible.

Twait did call ahead, to request Danio to sing at Dunnage’s request, and to warn them that they were on their way. But Victor’s village was, at best, a six hour walk away, cut down to an hour if you managed to get the tram, but Ray wasn’t sure they would let a dead body onto the trams. Instead they gradually got into position, everyone who wanted to form the crowd of mourners dressed in their best clothes, and waited at the edge of town, staring across the docks for where the pallbearers were meant to come, passing through the outskirts of town.

They waited in awkward silence for half an hour, before at last they saw them.

Allis lead the way, in oversized black clothes that defintiely did not fit or suit her, and it took Ray a moment or two to realise she must be wearing some of Twait’s old mourner clothes, having grown out of the last clothes her parents had gotten her, and having to use her brother’s instead, followed by a small crowd of five or so twelve year old girls, all in their best clothes, all heads bowed, their sobs audible from the distance. But Allis did not cry, didn’t even shake, her head held high, her face set into a look of respectful neutrality.

Behind them came the coffin, carried by its six pall-bearers. Dunnage walked up front, tears streaming down his face still, while Clew walked behind him, one hand lifting the coffin, the other gripping Dunnage’s shoulder for support, his face screwed up in pain of lifting such a weight one-handed. To Dunnage’s right was Twait, the same expression on his face as was on Allis’, Seine walking behind him. Bringing up the rear was Jib, who Ray recognised, his greying black hair blowing in his face, and behind Seine, a man Ray did not recognise, but it was wrinkled, surrounded by short grey hair, the build and stern face of a fisherman, wearing beautiful hand knitted clothes. It could only be Mako, Mags’ husband, helping to carry a new victor’s sister as he had once carried his own son.

As they turned to head across the docks, Ray spotted something else, too. Camera crews, almost certainly from the Capitol, filming every tear and every step, and Ray could see Clew turning to snarl at them when they got too close, like flies buzzing around a corpse, desperate to get to that which they could not have. The silence was deafening, and Ray was glad when he heard Danio pull in that lungful of air and start singing.

That at least deters the camera crew from Dunnage’s grief, turning to film where Danio stood beside his father, by the gangplank to their boat, the crew already in place to help pull the coffin on board and sail it to sea. One thing could be said for Danio and Nangra though: no-one down the docks had nicer clothes to appear on TV in, thanks to Aki. They truly looked the part, respectful, mournful, and when Danio sang dressed like that, you could almost believe he was a proper tourist entertainer and not a simple fisherman. If only you ignored his lucky eye.

When the chorus started the entire dockyards sang along, Danio’s voice still audible above the rest, an untrained chorus but a practiced one at least. A very well practiced one. Ray reached out and grabbed Shad’s hand as the second verse started, the coffin growing ever nearer.

“Plot a course to the night to a place I once knew
To a place where my hope died along with my crew
So I swallow my grief and face life's final test
To find promise of peace and the solace of rest”

Was there any solace for Dunnage to find, here in the docks where the in-land kids feared to tread? Even taking his sister down to the beach, he’d never bring her here, the closest they could ever get was the justice square just north of the docks, and wasn’t that truly where Dunnage’s hope died? Ray shuffled where he stood, feeling the lyrics hitting too close to home, desperately trying to shake free the misery that had settled in since Rode’s death, who he barely even knew, singing along to the chorus as best as he could.

When the coffin neared the boat, Danio stepped aside, still singing, as Nangra took up the front of the coffin, helping to carry it on board as the crew stepped forward to help. Allis lead Rode’s friends back away from the water’s edge while most of the pallbearers exited from the boat, Twait taking up position next to Allis as two of Rode’s friends climbed on board as the song reached its final chorus. Danio saluted to Nangra as Nangra saluted back, and Allis and Twait both did a deep, synchronised bow to the boat and coffin, before stepping back, watching as the boat pulled away from the docks as the song finally ended.

A small round of applause started up, not from any of the mourners or dockyard folk, and Ray saw heads turn to try and find the source. The camera crew, dressed to the nines in the most ridiculous clothes anyone could ever find, were applauding the end of the song, while Clew’s face screwed up.

“Got what you wanted, did you? Can’t give him a single moment of peace, even at his sister’s damn funeral?” Clew asked, while Seine reached out to pull him back. “Bet you wish you could get on the boat too, you heartless monsters. Leave him be to suffer on his own.”

“Clew, come on,” Seine insisted as the camera crew pulled offended faces at him. “Let’s wait for Dunnage to get back. They’re not worth it.”

It takes Seine and Jib to pull Clew back from the camera crew, who instead descend upon Danio for a few moments, giving Seine and Allis time to shepherd the mourners further into the dockyards and out of the firing line, but the camera crew don’t stick around long with Danio, and by the time most of the neighbourhood had cleared off back home, Danio is left alone once more, walking back over to Ray and Shad with a resigned look.

“They liked my singing,” Danio explained. “They didn’t like my eye, though. Said I looked, how did they put it, ‘too disturbing for the telly’.”

“It’s just wonky, like your teeth,” Shad scoffed. “It’s not that bad. I think your eyes are really pretty, Danio.”

“Thanks kid,” Danio said with exasperation. “At least every one who matters likes my eyes. My wife, my son, and my two favourite dickheads.”

“We’re everyone’s favourite dickheads,” Shad agreed. “Come on, let’s go see to Allis.”

They waved good-bye to Danio and headed off in the direction they’d seen Seine and Allis lead everyone, deeper into the streets of the dockyard where cameras and Capitolites feared to tread. Seine and Clew were discussing something quietly at the edge of the group, while Rode’s friends sat cross legged on the floor in mournful silence. Twait and Allis, too, were sat on the floor, Twait having his arms wrapped around his legs while Allis sat beside him, whispering something to him, her hand grasping his arm. Jib and Mako were instead leaning against one of the house walls, turning to stare at Ray and Shad as they neared.

“Private wake, kids,” Jib called out, to which Allis looked up, Seine turning to frown in their direction. “No interlopers.”

“It’s okay,” Allis spoke up. “They’re my friends, they helped Twait to charter the boat.”

Jib still didn’t look best pleased, but with no-one else arguing the case he dropped it, turning back to chat quietly with Mako, while Ray and Shad sat down beside Allis, still rubbing at Twait’s arm.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “Twait’s having a… a bad day.”

Twait certainly looked unwell, in a way Ray couldn’t quite pinpoint, clutching his legs, his eyes fixed on a point Ray couldn’t make out, rocking where he sat, barely acknowledging that they had joined them.

“It was a really good funeral, though. You two did a really great job,” Shad offered. “Just as good as your parents. Better, even. They never got Danio to sing for anyone.”

Allis gave a thankful smile. “It was Twait’s work more than mine,” she admitted. “He always was better at all the jobs our parents asked us to do at the shop. He’d like to open it again one day, if we can get the money together for it.”

“You’re younger,” Twait piped up, though his voice once more had that same, flat tone to it that it had in the interview. Just like Allis said, up and down, up and down. Yesterday must have been a good day, because he couldn’t look more different. “Need training. No, no, can’t train, can’t train, can’t let you go to the Academy. Can’t risk you-”

“Twait,” Allis interrupted, shaking him slightly, “No-one mentioned the Academy.”

But Twait barely seemed to notice, muttering to himself about the train that took Dunnage and Rode away to the Capitol instead, while Allis winced, turning back to Ray and Shad. “He took a turn for the worse about dinner time last night. We all stayed at Dunnage’s house last night, but I don’t think Twait slept at all, I could hear him wandering in the corridors all night. I just hope its the stress.”

“Strange being back here again,” Mako muttered as Ray and Shad turned to see him, to hear him a little better. “Haven’t really visited since we took Roger to sea. It’s too hard not to see him in every nook and cranny down here.”

“Going to visit the distant family?” Jib asked, but Mako shook his head.

“Mags brings them all to the house once a week anyway. Surprised to see Nangra’s got a boat, though, when the hell did that happen? And who did he have to kill to afford that?”

Ray and Shad both winced, with Ray clearing his throat a little while some passing neighbours shot looks Mako’s way. “His wife was murdered, Mr Flannagan. So he took a risk with all his money and managed to buy a boat.”

Mako’s face fell. “Ailia? Crud, forget I said anything. They ever catch who did it?”

“No.”

“There’s always some horrible tragedy going on in that family. Can’t tell you how glad I was to see at least one of their kids are still alive.”

“They’ve got a grandkid now too.”

“Seriously? I think I need to come down here more often,” Mako complained. “I’m completely out of the loop. Who’s kid are you two, anyway?”

“Wobbe’s,” Shad answered, to which Mako nodded. “Nangra’s grandson is five, by the way. He’s not a recent addition.”

“Well, sh-ugar. Things move fast around here, don’t they?” Mako asked.

“I think it’s just slow back home,” Jib shrugged. “When you average a new neighbour moving in every seven years and little else in between, time flows differently.”

Collectively they sit around as a group, never talking too much. Rode’s friends look the most glum, pulling out a packed lunch when mid-day rolls around, while Mako instead collars one of their neighbours to ask them to go to town and buy some sandwiches for the rest of them, although Ray and Shad pop home momentarily to get their own lunch. They share a bit with Allis too, who tries to tempt Twait to eat, but he turns it down, insisting he wasn’t even hungry. Allis argues it with him, complaining that he didn’t eat breakfast either, and finally Twait does stomach half of a sandwich, but nothing more, offering the rest of his lunch to Shad and Ray instead.

Some of the neighbours stop to chat with Mako, but everyone else gets ignored. Even Jib, a Victor, a bonafide celebrity, is mostly ignored, except for a few passing stares. It’s hours before anything happens.

“There’s the Salty Cairn,” Shad pointed out, all heads whipping up to look as it slowly pulled back towards port. “Are you going down to the docks to greet Dunnage?”

“Told him to meet us here,” Mako muttered. “Massive crowd moves down to the docks again, the camera crews are going to notice.”

There’s some time between the return of the Cairn and the appearance of Dunnage, but when he does return, he’s surrounded by the crew of the Cairn, blocking him from sight of anyone but his friends. Clew rushes forward to greet him, pulling him back among the group as Rode’s friends congregated on the floor once more.

“It’s over,” Clew assured him. “It’s all done. Just gotta get you home, now.”

Dunnage still had that sickly pallour to his skin that he had at the crowning, his eyes seemingly permanently red with tears. Most of the crew were waved off back to their houses, but Nangra stuck around, walking up to Mako, speaking about something Ray couldn’t hear.

“I can’t face them again, Clew,” Dunnage whispered. “I can’t. They won’t let me go home without a thousand questions, and I can’t answer them, I can’t.”

“I know,” Clew rubbed Dunnage’s back. “I know. But once you’re home, you can stay there. We’ll do all the travel, face all the cameras, you just tell us what you need, and we’ll get it. Just this one last journey.”

“If we get to the tram stop, we might be able to move a bit more privately. Then it’s just sit on the tram with us all crowded around you until we get back to the stop for the Academy, and walk to Victor’s Village from there,” Seine offered, turning to Ray and Shad. “What’s the quickest way to the tram stop from here?”

“Quickest is through the docks and get on at the beach,” Ray explained. “But that’s really close to town and there’ll be lots of tourists. Might be quieter to get the tram from the East end of the Justice Square, instead. But you’ll still need to pass through the docks.”

“Where all the cameras are waiting,” Dunnage muttered with a horrified tone.

“Sounds like you need a distraction, kid,” Nangra piped up.

“Bet you if we ask nicely enough Danio would sing again,” Shad offered. “He likes to sing, doesn’t take much to convince him. Then the cameras would be focused on him and his voice and you can sneak past a little easier.”

“Would he?” Dunnage asked. “I feel like all I’ve done is take and take from you all… can’t even pay…”

“Eh. We’ll get the food from those parcels soon enough,” Nangra waved him off. “Don’t you panic, we’ll get our pound of flesh from you same as everyone else, might as well pay it back ahead of time. Ray, Shad, do you mind?”

Ray and Shad leapt to their feet, shaking their heads. “Nope! Where’s he gonna be?”

“This time of day on a day-off he didn’t know he was going to have in the height of summer… chances are down the beach with Tali practising their diving. He’ll have taken a surface marker with him, you’ll find him easily, you might just have to wait for him to surface.”

They didn’t wait around for more information, making their way as fast as they could towards the beach without looking like they were running, scanning the surface of the ocean until Shad pointed out Danio’s surface marker. Ray stripped down, leaving most of his clothes with Shad while he swam out towards the marker, treading water a short distance away from it, until he saw Danio surface, Tali close behind.

“Danio!” Ray greeted, swimming closer as Danio wrapped Tali up with one of his arms, using the other to keep them both afloat. “Your Pa sent us. We need you to cause a distraction for the cameras so Dunnage can get home.”

“No rest for the wicked, huh?” Danio asked with a grin, while Tali whined. “Come on, kiddo. Dunnage just made sure you and all your little friends will get exciting treats and more money for the whole year, least we can do is help him out a little, yeah?” Danio turned back to Ray. “Head on back, make sure there’s a crowd ready to listen to me, even if its just our neighbours. We’ll block any view of him.”

Ray nodded, swimming back to shore and telling Shad the plan as he tried to pull his clothes back on over his wet skin, cursing that neither of them had thought to stop by home to bring a towel with them, before they were making their way back to the dockyards as quickly as they could. Nangra had put the word out too, and by the time Ray and Shad had gotten back, people were milling about in the streets, ready to step out to create a crowd as soon as Danio gave the signal.

“This is wild,” Seine muttered. “You could never get this many people working together like this for a stranger back home.”

“Food talks here, kid,” Nangra explained. “You bring us food and ask for something in return, we do it. An orphan wins the Games and brings us food parcels and asks us to keep him from the cameras, we’ll do it. Anytime.”

Far off in the distance, Ray could hear Danio start to sing, but for once, it wasn’t a shanty. Ray couldn’t pick out the words, really, they sounded like nonsense to him, but even at the distance, he could hear Danio’s voice, could see their neighbours stepping out to create a crowd to listen to him sing, and could see the surprised looks on Dunnage’s friends faces.

“Forgot your boy wanted to be an opera singer, Nangra. Bet that’s a skill that’s rarely used,” Mako joked.

“Don’t you believe it. He sings us all awake and to sleep, and can talk to you from the far side the dockyards without even trying,” Nangra replied, a proud smile on his face.

“It sounds weird,” One of Rode’s friends said with a slight laugh.

“It’s classy stuff, for tourists and rich people,” Seine explained. “Didn’t think… no offence to you guys down here, but I didn’t think you’d be into that sort of thing.”

“We’re not, we just like Danio,” Ray explained. “He could sing insults at us if he wanted with that voice and we’d still sing along with him.”

Nangra lead the group back towards the docks, pushing Shad to take the lead to show the group the way to the tram. They broke off into little small groups, with Dunnage in the first group as Shad rushed him onwards with Clew and Seine gathered around him, blocking him from sight, but they needn’t have bothered. The crowd formed around Danio and Tali was large, the cameras completely surrounded on all sides by their neighbours, and the tourists who couldn’t get near clung to the edges of the crowd, desperately trying to catch sight of Danio, as if he couldn’t be heard clearly regardless.

“I’ll take the next group,” Mako declared, waving together Rode’s friends. “Wobbe’s boy, can you lead the rest of them?”

“Sure can, Mags’ husband,” Ray replied with a grin while Mako lead the girls away, leaving Ray with just Allis, Twait and Jib.

“You know, I expected all sorts with this funeral today, but a fisherman singing Schubert’s Erlkönig was not on the list,” Jib joked. “Why does he keep missing lines?”

“He tries to get Tali to sing with him, he’s probably letting him sing them, but Tali doesn’t sing loudly,” Ray explained, glancing towards the crowd as Nangra gave him a thumbs up. “I think this is our chance.”

Ray took the lead, Allis had her arm wrapped around Twait’s, leading him onwards towards the square, while Jib took up the rear, passing through the alleyway between the offices and the warehouse to get to the Justice Square, ornately decorated in banners and flags to celebrate Dunnage’s victory yet mostly empty now, save for a few peacekeepers who watched them pass by with mild interest. At the far side of the justice square they finally reached the tram stop, where Dunnage had already boarded, sitting right at the back and hidden from view by his friends sat tightly either side of him, Rode’s friends blocking most of the seats in front of him. Shad waved Allis, Twait and Jib on board.

“Safe journeys,” Shad wished them. “See you soon, Allis.”

Allis gave them a thankful smile before ushering her brother on board, Jib taking up the rear, as the applause from down the docks reached them, just as the tram rang its bell to set off. Ray and Shad stepped back, waving them all good-bye as Jib handed over money for all their tickers to the conductors.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen a funeral quite like that one,” Shad muttered as they watched the tram pull away.

“And I don’t think I ever want to see one like it again,” Ray agreed.