The sharp sound of the boiling kettle tore Dean awake. Today was the day he had spent his entire life working toward.
A dusty sunlight scattered through his thin cotton drapes, landing carefully on his thick white sheets. Relishing every moment he had left in his childhood home, Dean watched it dye the plain fabric a warm, inviting, mid-morning orange. It was only six, so most of the people down in Dubris wouldn't be up yet. Not today. Today was the only real holiday anyone in the districts would ever experience.
And this day, it was entirely his own holiday. They would celebrate him.
Dean stared up at the tan ceiling and watched as the dusty mist swirled in concert with the marks in the clay. This would be the last time he'd wake up to this ceiling. He closed his eyes, reopening them as if to relive the moment once more. Finally shaking himself from his trance, he moved through the rest of his morning activities with this same mentality; making his bed and dressing with a meticulous eye - allowing himself to move more slowly than he ever had before. Finally, wiping any trace of sleep from his stunning green eyes, he arrived his large hand-stained mirror one last time.
This was it. He would either return to look into this mirror again, a hero, or he wouldn't.
"Dean!" his father's voice shook the floor below him. Even though the rest of District 2 was moving slowly, following his sacrimonial pace, he knew his father would intend to treat today as if it were any other. Bending to his will, Dean jammed his feet into his best work boots and jogged downstairs.
"There you are. I thought you'd had a mental break or something," he father chuckled, sitting at the beautifully carved kitchen table like a king in his throne, a mug of coffee in his thick hands.
"No, I just slept in. Just like every other Reaping Day," Dean mumbled, sliding into the seat across from his father - his loyal servant.
"But it isn't, son!" his father shouted joyously, reaching over to place an unusually supportive hand on his wrist, "This is your Reaping Day!"
Fearful as to what he might see if he met his father's gaze, Dean looked up. He had always imagined how the older man would act the day Dean volunteered as tribute. Maybe, he'd finally be that loving and caring father that every other child bragged about between classes, or maybe he'd finally show some emotion other than blind determination. Perhaps he would finally catch a glimmer of fear in the man's eyes, or at least some acknowledgement of the likely outcome of the training he had been subjected to.
But when the two Winchesters locked eyes, nothing had changed. Dean looked up into the same hard, resolute stare that had glared back at him every other morning. Nothing had changed in the Winchester house, Dean's clock had just counted down to zero.
The two men sat in the large, ornate room silently, just as they had every other morning. Dean drank a bit more than normal, careful to hide the flask from his father at the edge of his sleeve as he tipped it into his mug. The whiskey-stained coffee burned in his throat, mixed with his own awareness of his fate. Eventually, when the room began to cloud, he decided it was best to cut himself off.
"I'm going to go into town" he interjected, careful to hide his drunkness behind his learned, unwavering tone, "To join the festivities."
"Will I see you again before the event?" his father responded, barely looking up from his breakfast.
"No." And Dean was out the door.
The smell of fresh flowers bombarded him as he stepped outside.
"Surprise!"
A thin young boy, Raphael, popped out from behind the bushes, a giant bouquet of tropical flowers in his hands and a smile that could blind half of the neighborhood plastered on his preadolescent face.
"From the rest of the Victor's Circle to you! May the odds be in your favor!"
Dean couldn't help but smile back at the boy.
"You really didn't have to," he looked down at him, "Go give them to Ruby down in Dubris. She'll be much happier to see them."
"Oh, we already gave her flowers, you trickster," Raphael laughed as the weight of the arrangement caused an obvious stress on his back, "and besides, your dad will need something to take your place while you're gone."
Dean nodded only once, his neck suddenly too stiff to control. He remembered what it was like when he was Raphael's age: he would have seen this year's tributes as superheroes. He would had followed them around like a lost puppy, hoping that when they returned they'd tell him all of their war stories the Capitol's cameras had ignored. He would have made jokes about the lifesized flowers he had brought them, equating their own lives to the lives of a bundle of cut flowers arranged and assembled with the same careful, determined hand that his own instructors had used to craft the machine he had become. But as he aged, he realized that even in District 2 these heroes rarely returned, and when they did they were broken, empty shells of the child who had left. They had rotted, withered alongside those flowers. That, and he had realized that the extensive combat training his father had gotten him out of class for wasn't normal. He had been cut at his stems.
He had heard a few months ago that Raphael's parents had signed him up for this same training, setting him up for a similar fate.
"Yeah, I guess," he eventually responded, "Just take them in to him."
"Wait," Raphael nearly choked on his excitement, "I get to talk to John Winchester? Victor of the 27th Hunger Games!"
"Yeah, kid," Dean sighed, "Talk to him all you want."
.o0o.
"Hurry up, men, we've got to get this place cleared out before the Peacekeepers show up! We aren't supposed to work today!"
Balthazar's cool voice shook Castiel out of his exhausted haze. Peeling his eyes from his station, he shakily adjusted them as he looked around his large warehouse workroom. He had worked the past four shifts without breaks, and it had taken toll. It was as if he had just woken up from a bad dream, and his eyes wanted to return to their languid, darkened world where they could be shielded from any light - or the reality that his life was just as bad as those nightmares.
Bringing his grimy hands to his big blue eyes, he yawned. Was it Reaping Day? Had he been here that long?
"That's it, I'm not joking. Everybody get out!" Balthazar screamed as he paced down the row of sleep deprived workers. "Happy Hunger Games! And to those of you under eighteen, may the odds be ever in your favor!"
The older man looked straight at Castiel as he said his final words, a glimmer of sadness in his otherwise forceful eyes. The two had been close friends for as long as the sixteen-year-old could remember. Balthazar had always looked out for him, even going out of his way to give him a job on the safest floor of the power plant despite Castiel's general lack of experience.
"Goodbye, Balthazar. I hope to see you tomorrow," Castiel mumbled as he shuffled out of the dimly lit workroom and onto the even hazier street corner.
It was still dark outside, but the streets of Opificina were lined with people rushing home to avoid the arrival of the Peacekeepers. Castiel threw himself into the crowd, giving in to the current of people that rushed through the broken down streets of the largest town in District 5. He moved with them, a cog in their machine, a dispensable soldier in their daily battle, a single drop of water in their river on the brink of a flood. As the water finally ebbed, he pulled himself from its current and stumbled to the door of his apartment building.
About twenty other people followed him in, each discussing work or something else related to it as if it were the only subject they could even begin to consider. No one talked about the Reaping, even though it was on everyone's mind. Until the moment this year's representative showed the cheesy little video about the uprising and selected the names of this year's unfortunate tributes, they would act as if it were any other day.
The elevator stopped at Castiel's floor with an unsettling squeak. He jammed his key into the lock, opening the rusting door to his dark studio apartment. He flipped the light switch desperately, fully aware that it couldn't work on willpower alone.
"Cas, is that you?"
The voice of his older sister, Anna, shook him. She was laying on one of the grimy mattresses that was crammed into the corner of the room, her long orange hair matted at her shoulders.
"I thought you were working until 6," he stated, "It is approximately 5:30."
He stood rigid in the doorway. It wasn't like her to leave work early, even on Reaping Day.
"Oh, they made us go," she mumbled, rolling back over. "I'd suggest you get some sleep. You don't want to look too tired if you get called."
The statement was meant as a joke, but no one laughed. The bitter taste of it hung in the air, soaking up any joy it might have touched. While District 5 was large compared to the others, an urban area, no one really knew for sure what the odds were. But Castiel knew that, no matter what, there was a chance the name pulled from the giant glass orbs would be his.
"How much money did you make today?" he asked blatantly, moving to sit next to her.
"Only about half as much as we need for rent, you?"
Castiel fingered the pay slip Balthazar had given him desperately. He was working more than he could and still couldn't pay for his home.
"Not enough."
.o0o.
The second the morning light sliced through the overgrown trees, Sam was awake. He gathered his pack and knife in a hurry, careful not to make too much noise. By now, there'd be Peacekeepers at every corner of the District to make sure kids like him didn't try to beat the odds.
He shuddered to think that they may have even turned on the fences. They never had before, but this year a new Head Peacekeeper was rumored to have been appointed to District 12. Sam knew he should have expected some sort of change, but he had just wanted to escape. For a moment, he closed his eyes and imagined what would happen if he found the fence buzzing like a thousand tracker jackers, if he failed to make it to the reaping. Maybe that was what he had wanted all along.
But no such noise came from the fence as he approached it, allowing him to abandon such considerations. Just like every other morning, he tucked his knife into his boot, flung his pack over the penetrable wall, and climbed through the hole he had hacked open exactly six years earlier.
The town was quiet. All the illegal activities that would have taken place were temporarily halted due to the Capitol's increased attention, leaving the Hob a dead and deserted place. Two of the many Peacekeepers turned to look at Sam as he passed, sizing up his oversized, lanky frame.
"Excuse me, sir," one of them grumbled, holding up his arm to stop him from passing, "What have you got in that bag there?"
Sam couldn't help but roll his eyes. He knew better than to carry anything he couldn't explain while they were here, and he knew they were well aware of this. He opened his small blue bag, exposing his mining uniform, a small bag of berries, and a half empty tin water bottle. It was all that he owned, but he knew it was more than some of the boys and girls who died of hunger before his very eyes would ever hope to posses.
"Where did you get these berries?" the Peacekeeper asked, snatching the only potentially illegal item in the bag.
"I bought them," Sam lied. He had picked them last night before he had foolishly fallen asleep in the woods on the eve of Reaping Day. The Peacekeepers looked at one another quizzically, waiting for the other to take control of the unnecessary conversation.
"We'll just take them then," one finally said, shoving the bag into his jacket pocket. He motioned for the other to follow as he hurried to question another unsuspecting townsperson.
Sam cursed under his breath. That had been the first time he had found a meal's worth of berries in over a month, and now they were rubbing up against some Peacemaker's beer belly.
His stomach roared in protest, screaming for some sort of nourishment. A feeling of self hatred surged through him as he jogged toward the Distillery. He hated reaching out for Gabriel's help more than anything else.
"Hey, Gabe!" He shouted in tune with his stomach's requests, knocking heavily on the bolted wooden door. He stood back for a moment, waiting for his only friend to respond. As a merchant's son, he was probably still asleep.
"Hey, kid," a slurred voice called to him from the alley, "They don't open 'till nine on the holidays."
A dirty yet handsome boy lay propped up against the Distillery's moldy stone wall, an empty bottle in his dirt-covered hand.
"You- You're Haymitch," Sam said, failing to suppress his shock. While the people of District 12 were used to seeing their one and only surviving victor a little tipsy as he wandered into town for a drink, Sam had managed to discover him completely wasted.
"Pleasure to meet you, but they won't open the door until nine for anyone, even little old me."
Right on cue, the thick door opened and Gabriel's messy head peeked out.
"Come on in, Sam," he said, looking down at the now agitated Haymitch skittishly.
The two boys ducked into the shop as quickly as they could, just in time to dodge Haymitch's array of curses and laughing as they went.
"He's really going downhill," Gabriel said, sitting down at one of the benches that lined the walls, "he's been in here four times over the past two weeks, spending enough each time to keep us afloat for a month. By the look of it, he slept here last night."
They laughed for a moment at the man's expense. Haymitch had more money than everyone in the Seam, and yet he blew it all on liquor. No one blamed him, though. The Games were known to do that to people.
"So," Gabriel inquired, "what brought you to town so early?"
Sam looked down at his worn brown boots. Nothing bothered him more than having to ask Gabriel for help.
"Some Peacekeepers took my only food," he said simply, running his hand through his overgrown brown hair, "That, and what with today I sort of thought –"
Gabriel lifted his hand to cut him off. He rose to his feet and limped into the back section of the building without another word. Sam could remember the day some random Peacekeepers gave him that limp. Two of them had beaten Gabriel unconscious after Gabriel tried to stop them from taking a rabbit Sam had caught. Gabriel had never walked right after that.
In a few minutes, Gabriel returned with a somewhat moldy loaf of bread and a hunk of unrecognizable cheese.
"This is all I can take from the pantry without alerting the parents," he smiled, setting the food down in front of his starving friend. "You can probably wash up in the back before they wake up. Just make sure to be as quiet as possible."
Sam smiled and nodded, shoving the food into his mouth at record speed. As the food landed in his stomach, anchoring him to his seat, he couldn't help but think that, maybe, today was actually shaping up to be a pretty good one after all.