Chapter Text
Nie Huaisang did not hear the first time his name was called from the pristine stage outside the city hall. The world had narrowed and stilled into something not quite real. He was…unfocused. Unaware. Which was a very bad thing considering what was happening a mere few feet in from of him. It wasn't until he turned his head and saw the faces of the people around him, all of them fixed on him with expressions ranging from relief to ashen-faced horror, that he realised something had happened.
"Huaisang?" Luo Qingyang called again, "Nie Huaisang?"
Oh.
That was him. He was Nie Huaisang. The expressions of the crowd suddenly made much more sense, and he could feel the blood draining down from his own cheeks, but what other reaction was there when your name was called in the Games? He should be terrified. He was terrified. Down to the very pit of his stomach.
But the woman in the sparkling blue suit on the stage, Luo Qingyang, District 4's assigned escort, was beginning to look increasingly impatient, and he knew if he didn't move, his chances of survival would go from 1 in 24 to absolute zero. Becuase he would be shot right there. Fighting down bile that threatened to rise up in his throat, he forced one foot forward, then another and another as the makeshift stage in front of the city hall grew closer and closer.
He pushed through the crowd, but not before looking back over his shoulder where he knew his brother was. It was an almost childlike instinct that made him do it, similar to the way toddlers would look to their parents when they fell to see if it was worth crying. He was holding it together now, but if he found Mingjue, and he was losing his shit, then he knew there was really something to be worried about.
His brother was easy to find in the amassed crowd - he was a mountain of a man after all. When their eyes met, Huaisang could see the terror in his eyes, and he knew in that moment that he wasn't making it out of this. Really, Huaisang thought, he had known that from the start. He was wirey and more likely to be knocked over by a particularily strong breeze, and he had never even won so much as a fist fight in his whole life. His brother looked, for all intents and purposes, calm on the outside with his hands folded behind his back, but Huaisang hadn't lived with him his whole life to not see the fear behind them. The tension in his shoulders, and then clench in his jaw even from this distance that gave away how he was really feeling.
He opened his mouth to shout something, to call out maybe, but then he tripped on a loose pebble in the cobblestone and had to turn around to catch himself before he ate shit on live television. He looked up, blinking tears of humiliation and maybe fear from his eyes, and looked up towards the stage. There was someone else there with Luo Qingyang as well, but Huaisang could only bring himself to meet the man's eyes for a moment before he had to look away. He couldn't bear to see the heartbreak in Wei Wuxian's eyes as he took one step closer and closer to what was most likely his own death.
Huaisang saw one girl crying out of the corner of his eye, someone he had never met before in his life. He couldn’t think of why she might be crying like that, maybe out of relief? He couldn’t blame her if that was the case. He probably would too if their situations were reversed. Unfortunately the echo of cobblestone beneath his feet as he moved closer and closer to the stage was a ringing reminder that he’d had no such luck. The odds had not been “in his favour” as the bright-eyed, rich elites of Qishan enjoyed saying so much. He took his spot on the left side of the stage, right at the front for everyone to see him, and tried not to be sick.
He just prayed that it didn't get any worse, not that there were many options for it to become so. Mingjue had aged out of the reaping already, and Wuxian was in it whether he liked it or not. He didn't have any other family besides his broter, which meant there was only one more person still in that crowd he cared about. It would be fine as long as it wasn't him. Anyone but him.
“And now," Luo Qingyang announced with a smile thant made Huaisang sick, "the second tribute for this year's games!"
Dread pooled in Huaisang's stomach, blood rushing in his ears. It would be fine, wouldn't it? There was no way-
She approached the drawing pile far too casually, as if this really was just a game and she wasn’t sending whichever poor soul he drew from the ball of paper to their death. Then she returned to the microphone, unfolding the name slip. For half a second there was an odd expression that crossed her face as her smile spasmed, and then it was gone.
She cleared his throat and read the name on that little slip of paper.
“Jiang Wanyin.”
Huaisang's blood went cold and he felt his knees go weak. Behind him Wei Wuxian let choked, painful gasp that might have been a 'No.'
Suddenly, the very air itself seemed to be standing still, and Huaisang knew why. Oh, the reaping was cruel this year, wasn’t it? It might be funny if everything else about the situation wasn’t so supremely fucked. Huaisang scanned the crowd frantically through the beginnings of blurred vision, searching for one very specific face in the crowd.
Because this wasn’t the first time Luo Qingyang had read the name ‘Jiang Wanyin’ out of the reaping pool. Five years ago had been the first and only other time, and people were still talking about it in Yunmeng as if it had happened yesterday. This was probably owing to the fact that the name had barely left Luo Qingyang's mouth before the shout of ‘I volunteer!’ had split the silence in the courtyard. Wei Wuxian, Wanyin's adoptive older brother, had volunteered as tribute in his place and it hadn’t been pretty. Huaisang remembered how he had tried futiley to hold Wanyin back as he had lunged at Wuxian, and even then they had needed to call five different peacekeepers to restrain him after he punched his brother hard in the face and tried to go up instead. The spectacle had left the district buzzing all day, and the Hunger Games publicity team had called it ‘a moving display of brotherhood loyalty.’
It might have been nice except for the fact that Huaisang knew that neither Wanyin or Wuxian had spoken a word to each other even once in the five years since Wuxian had returned as the victor of one of the most brutal games in the history of the games.
No one volunteered for Wanyin now.
His walk was even more deafeningly quiet than Huaisang's had been. Somehow, Wanyin looked calm. Furious, yes, but it was clear that there wasn’t a single thought in his head wishing for anyone to come save him again. He didn't look at Wuxian as he stepped up onto the platform and took his place beside Huaisang, but he nudged Huaisang's shoulder with his own with a glance that somehow managed to ease a bit of the terror gnawing at his gut. Not much, of course. But there was something comforting in a sick, twisted way about having his best friend there with him.
Luo Qingyang stepped up to the microphone again with a tight smile, “Everyone!” She announced, “May I present District Four's tributes for the 49th annual Hunger Games! Nie Huaisang and Jiang Wanyin! Can we get a round of applause?”
She did not, in fact, get that round of applause.
The next thing Huaisang knew, they were ushered off the stage by hands that were none too gentle. Peacekeepers pushed them through the set of tall metal doors that lead to the city hall and when they slammed shut with a dull bang, it felt like the sound of the final nail in his coffin. He wasn’t coming back here, somehow Huaisang knew. The fleeting glimpse of the dissipating crowd outside was the last he would ever see of District 4.