Work Text:
A year, give or take. Take, mostly.
The fifty-first reaping. Tomorrow, he'll stand up in front of that crowd full of all the people he can never truly speak to again. And there will be cameras: tens of thousands of eyes on him, on Twelve's second victor. They'll be asking if Twelve can do it again. (Impossible. The other districts will be gunning for Twelve from the start. To put them back in their place.)
Two more kids for the gallows. He'll know them, of course he will. Maybe he sat next to them in class, or he knew their older sibling. God, they're all so young. How did he get so old in one short year? Maybe someday he'll be old enough to no longer see familiar faces among the crowd.
It's a null hope. He'll just start seeing the same faces on new bodies. Children, nieces, and nephews of the ones lucky enough to not be chosen. They will always, every one of them, be familiar to him, because Twelve is in his blood as much as theirs.
He suspects those young faces will start looking even smaller to him as years pass.
Christ, he needs a drink.