A crowd of grey flocked into the square like sheep for slaughter. They stood in orderly rows, the youngest of the herd placed in front while the ones lucky enough to escape watched on with their tired, miserable eyes. Haymitch Abernathy stands tall, his eyes steadily gazing at the glass ball on the stage, 36 of the slips of paper have his name printed on them. He involuntarily clenches his fists, anxiety weighing down his lungs. He steals a glance at the merchant kids in their semi decent rags, terror so painfully evident in their faces, if any of them were to get reaped right now they would not be able to mask their fear. Mayor Forbes stands stiffly on the stage, towering over the district as he watches everyone fill in. And fill in they do, children of many ages, colour and height come in, praying that it won't be them. Once everyone is in their designated rows a silence blankets over them and Mayor Forbes takes his cue. He starts his speech, which in essence is the exact replica of all the other mayor speeches before him. The capitol propaganda plays telling the lovely nation's history and Syllax Reeve practically bounces on the stage, her hair and clothes an acidic yellow.
"Welcome!" she greets in an atrocious accent. "I bet you're all excited to find out who will be lucky enough for the honor of representing district twelve in the the second quarter quell!". If it were any other day Haymitch would have laughed.
"Lets see which lucky ladies will be bringing your district pride!" her heinous voice drawled on. She strutted towards the glass ball on the right. He gives Hannah a furtive smile, hoping it would convey all the things he couldn't say. She didn't notice of course, her eyes were glued on Syllax. Syllax's hand gropes around the bottom of the ball, trying to find it's unlucky victims.
" Maysilee Donner" her voice rings out.
His shoulders shamefully sagged in relief and he looks towards Hannah once more, this time she sends him a small grimace. Maysilee Donner walks towards the stage, her arms trembling. Syllax asks Maysilee questions that no longer matter to her and his eyes are fixed on the left glass ball. Syllax finished up her useless talk with Maysilee and begins to search for a victim once more.
"Weiona Emherman." she calls.
A seam girl with red hair makes her way to the stage, glancing back at what was presumably her family.
"Connor Luwid"
A frail, fifteen year old boy practically gets dragged to the stage.
"Haymitch Abernathy."
Time stood still and for a moment the boy swore his body shut down. His breathing started to take on a concerning level and his whole body visibly shook. He wanted to scream at the stupid,urine coloured lady, scream horrible things to all of the capitol citizens, it was only the sight of the camera that stopped him. He straightened his back and walked towards the stage, trying to deceive everyone of his indifference. He stared out towards the crowd, the faces below him are one's of sympathy mixed with relief that he knows so well after wearing the exact same for the past four years. The only faces that differ are the one's of Hannah and his parents. They wear the face of grief and horror and with a shock he realises they already think of him dead.
"May I present to Panem our tributes of District Twelve; Maysilee Donner, Weiona Emherman, Connor Luwin and Haymitch Abernathy".
Inside the Justice Building his parents rush over to envelope him in their arms. His mother's breath is soft and shaky but his father's hands remain strong and sturdy as he pats him on the back.
"Oh Haymitch" his mother whispers, stroking his hair. He stares up at her, she was a tall woman of brown hair with grey streaks.
"I could win" he whispers.
"Yes, you could" his father replies but they all know it's a lie. What chance does a scrawny seam boy have against brutal, trained careers?
The guard tells them their time is up, ensuring another round of hugs and kisses and his father eventually has to drag his crying mother off and sends one last, mournful look towards his way.
Hannah comes in next she wraps her arms around him but doesn't sob.
"You have to win Haymitch, you have to come back home."
'We both know I won't, Hannah"
"You're fast, you could outrun the careers and in training centre I'm sure they'll teach you to use a knife" he looks at her green eyes and he's surprised to see hope in them.
A silence passes before he says "I'll try"
The train, tasked with the job of taking us to the capitol, glides at a distressing speed. He stands in his appointed room, watching his world pass. He has no love for district twelve itself but there were people there, people who had made it slightly better. There was a pain in his chest when he thought of them, not a great physical pain but a pain that targets your mental state. People would call it love but in his circumstances, it was weakness. Eventually he forces himself to find the others.
Syllax was flipping through some sort of book with glossy pages, Weiona was absent, Connor was openly weeping and Maysilee was wordlessly eating. Her face has no tear streaks and her composure is calm though he guesses she's saving them for the night. He follows her example. He vaguely wonders who their mentors will be. Having no victors to supply it's tributes with, district twelve's tributes are always appointed a mentor from the capitol. He hopes he won't end up punching them.
The capitol surpasses the grand connotations associated with it's name. His eyes are unable to see a shortage of anything but instead they see a surplus of riches, he almost can't believe it. Tall, slim buildings grasp the sky, holding it, forcing it to stay. Blobs of colour, which he assumes are people, wander giving of shrill laughs and speaking in content tones, he almost envies them. The streets are clean and winding, they maze around, through and over the buildings. He almost wants to lose himself in them. Almost.
The orange of his stylist's hair is almost blinding. Her name he finds out is Cellinder. She asks him to guess what costume they'll be wearing this year. When he replies with "coal miners." her face falls.
Tribute after tribute is taken to the bright, lustrous stage to talk with Caesar Flickerman, who has donned the colour green this year giving him a sickly effect. Being the last tribute, Haymitch endures 47 interviews ranging from malicious psychopath to frightened child. He dully notes that Maysilee is presenting herself as the archetypal "smart-girl-from-the-piss-poor-district", though he's one to talk after all isn't he pretending to be "the-cocky-and-sly-boy-who-knows-what-he's-doing"?
Panem Cercond, that's his mentor's name. Panem, himself worships the ground President Snow walks on, if the president asked him to eat shit for a day then Haymitch has no doubt what the man's answer would be. Connor and Weiona don't appear fare better. Maysilee's mentor seems to be the best of the bunch: a women named Ralotte Kencer, Ralotte, it seems, knows what she's doing, the same can't be said for the other mentors. They dine on soft, salted fish and a creamy, orange soup. His favourite however is the tiny mound of a cake that bursts with nuts and dried fruit.
A sharp, single knock on his door prevents him from sleeping. He opens it expecting the worst, a message from the gamemakers notifying him that the games have been moved forward, but to his immense relief it's only Maysilee.
"We have training tomorrow."
"Really? I was under the impression that we were going to have a day off, maybe ride one of those trains again, it can be just you and me, May."
"Could you stop acting like a drunkard or do I have to tell Panem, he sure seems frightening."
"He's the stuff of nightmares." I reply, causing Maysilee to roll her eyes.
" Tomorrow we'll start with offensive training."
"We?"
"Unless of course you'd rather be alone when the careers find you."
"I'm not allying myself with you."
"Tough, I'm allying myself with you."
"Why me?"
She doesn't respond.
At training he sizes up his opponents. The careers are easy to spot with their strong builds and their excited eyes. He goes from station to station, Maysilee at his heels. He tries to sneak off without her notice but she always finds him. Eventually he decides to stop trying to lose her, figuring that she won't be able to follow him in the arena if he survives the bloodbath. At the weaponry station they both try to learn how to use a knife without killing themselves. Maysilee talks aimlessly about life back at distract twelve, he hates how it isn't a weakness for her, but a driving force.
"Sometimes when me and my sister misbehaved our father would take away our dolls, but only for a couple of minutes, our constant begging always got them back."
"Dolls? You had dolls?" he found himself asking
"Yeah, they were homemade but they got pretty boring after awhile though."
"Be thankful you had dolls to play with in the first place."
Maysilee, he grudgingly realises, has too much in common with him. When they time how far they can run without tiring she's exactly five seconds below him, when it comes to the number of accurate hits they can land she's seven hits above. Weiona has a suspiciously advanced knowledge on weapons and Connor is much too frail to do anything offensive. Most of all she refused to stopped talking about district twelve, she would talk about past teachers they had, annoying peacekeepers and the well known, eccentric, socials of district twelve. If she would just stop talking about home Haymitch was sure he could forget that they have the same roots.
Tomorrow Haymitch would have to impress the gamemakers with what, he assumed was, basic combat knowledge. He could already smell the foul scent of the zero they would show next to his picture. Much to his irrational annoyance, Maysilee turned out to be skilled at the dart gun and would no doubt be able to earn at least a six. For the first time he seriously considered having her as an ally but quickly dismissed the thought. Maysilee was home, and he couldn't kill in front of home. He wanted to kill in the shadows. He couldn't bear the thought of anyone from watching him turn into a monster. Even if the games were live broadcasts, he wouldn't see district twelve, he would forget. Maysilee was his weakness, a weakness he needed to lose.
He dreams of home. His mother is cooking a stew and his father is just back from the mines and Hannah is holding his hand, smiling at him.
"We'd be great allies, you know." and suddenly Maysilee is staring at him, her warm, hand holding his. He shouldn't like the way her hand feels on his. His mother is replaced by Syllax, reading her glossy book and Panem is sitting next to him, reciting the nation's anthem. "We could win, we could come back home." He knows it's just a dream because in the games there is no "we".
They are the last three people left.
"Why me?" he whispers to her when she's about to leave for the gamemakers. "Why not Weiona or Connor?"
"Because" she replied "You're home."
"So are Connor and Weiona."
"No, they're not." was all she said before leaving.
He understands. From his youngest years Haymitch was told there were two types of people inside the district. The people in the seam and the merchants. They're two halves of a whole. You can't have district twelve without both of them. Weiona's red hair is an anomaly within the seam and Connor was a merchant's son. Maysilee wanted to have some semblance of home in the arena, he could not grudge her for that.
He gets a seven, Connor a four, Weiona a seven and Maysilee an eight. Connor's face reddened as the boy felt everyone's pitying gaze. Haymitch dreaded what he would feel when Connor's face would appear in the night sky.
At the stockyard he waits with Cellider for the games to begin. He could not be Maysilee's home, it was a ridiculous idea. Only one of them would come out of this alive. His plan was to run and find water, everything else was irrelevant. But he doubted he would find it in him to say no if he were to ever see Maysilee, home after all was his weakness.