Chapter Text
May the odds be ever in your favour was a phrase that Ilya Rozanov had grown great distaste for as soon as he became old enough to understand what it meant. He was not ashamed to admit that his reasoning was selfish. The odds had never been in his favour.
They were not in his favour on a cold winter evening when he was twelve years old, of fresh reaping age, and found his mother’s limp body in the snow, her lips blue and her skin pale. His father, Grigori, said it was an accident, but Ilya knew better. He did not understand how she could have accidentally wandered out in the cold, wearing nothing but a thin dress, and allowed herself to fall asleep under her favourite tree. He hoped that freezing to death was a peaceful way to pass. He told himself it was, so he wouldn’t lose his mind picturing her suffering.
That evening, he wailed and clung to her body until his father tore him away and forced him inside.
Irina, his mother, was a lonely woman. She was not always that way. She used to tell him stories of her early days, before she met his father and before her sister was reaped, when she still held hopes of changing District 12 for the better.
Ilya’s father was absent for most of his childhood, appearing only when he needed something from Ilya. Not that his job demanded him to be, Ilya assumed he simply preferred to be anywhere other than around his children. Irina was used and treated as a means to an end, expected only to care for Ilya and his brother, Alexei, while his father worked and spent his wages on liquor.
He may have been young, but Ilya could tell that his mother was tired of their political system, which disadvantaged their district and treated people like commodities. She was a deliberate woman and did everything with purpose, and she hated the Hunger Games more than anything. Ilya always wondered if she had taken her life so soon after his twelfth birthday to prevent the possibility of seeing him be reaped, to prevent losing another loved one to the barbaric competition. He would never voice this thought aloud.
But yes, Ilya believed the odds were stacked against him from the moment his mother passed, and that the single event caused a domino effect of rotten luck in his life. His father’s health declined a few years later, with his mind and body deteriorating at a rapid pace. Sporadic dementia. The copious amounts of white liquor and sleep syrup he consumed likely contributed to his descent into illness, too. Ilya hated admitting to himself that he felt relief at his father’s passing. As he took his final breath in his bed, surrounded by empty bottles and flickering candlelight, Ilya felt at ease. The person responsible for years of emotional abuse, which had only intensified after Irina was no longer there to protect him, was finally gone.
His relief was short-lived when his older brother Alexei obtained legal guardianship of him.
Alexei was expected to take over his father’s business while caring for Ilya, and the stress made him unstable and violent. Ilya picked up odd jobs to bring in some income, but the pair were still struggling to make ends meet. No one wanted to hire a scrawny fifteen-year-old who could barely lift a sack of grain. Desperate, Ilya even added his name to the reaping bowl extra times, hoping for anything he could receive in exchange, no matter the horrifying potential consequences.
The cruel part of it all was that Ilya wished he didn’t understand the odds. He wanted to believe he had a chance of surviving past twenty-one, escaping the shithole he lived in, and doing something with his life that mattered. Except, odds were all he had ever known. Knowing them was the Rozanov family’s livelihood.
Grigori’s legacy, all he left to Ilya and Alexei when he died, was an illegal gambling ring in the depths of District 12. People came to their ring to bet on which children would be reaped, and then, throughout the Games, to bet on their odds of survival. It was sickening. However, it brought in the money they needed to survive. Grigori tried his best to hide the ring’s workings from Irina, understanding she would be disgusted by the idea of betting on children’s lives. She knew about it all, though, and it weighed on her heavily.
Oddsmaking was something Ilya was naturally skilled at, a talent his father and brother exploited to the very end. He was always calculating, always observing, always too aware for his own good.
All this to say, when Ilya Rozanov’s name was called at the reaping of his final eligible year, he was not surprised at all.