Stereotypes: The One Hundred and Thirty Fourth Hunger Games Chapter 1: Historical Events, a hunger games fanfic

Author's Note

This is not a SYOT.

I do not own the Hunger Games.

I don't even really own many of the ideas behind these tributes or the story.

See the end of the chapter for full author's notes. Feel free to skip to them.

District Ten Male, Colby Marshall (18)

Seven years ago

Colby was eleven when his father died.

He had been herding the cows in one of the back fields when he heard the commotion. By the time he got there a tarp had been laid over his father's body. Blood leaked out from underneath it. The other fieldhands tried to hide it from him and old Shane took him by the arm.

"Come on boy. Such things aren't for you to be seeing."

Colby didn't want to move. He wanted to see what was under the tarp. He wanted to his father really was dead. Gone. He would never lift a hand to him again.

Colby laughed.

He laughed and laughed and laughed until Angus managed to drag him away.

Colby was twelve when he hit his mother for the first time. He was already bigger than her, and she had no right to tell him to do anything, let alone send him to the shops for women's work.

She never did that again.

He was thirteen when his mother threw him out. He could hit her, she said, and take the role of his father. He could hit and scream at her all he wanted, but he was never, ever, to lay a finger on one of his siblings.

Her brother, Colby's 'Uncle Dale,' took him in. He said something about straightening him out. Colby spent long hours smashing logs for firewood, herding the beasts, and sleeping in a poorly heated attic. Dale was a softie really, he never lifted a hand to him. Hard work, fresh air, and good food was what he believed in.

Moron.

He was fifteen when he left his cousin Peggy in serious condition in hospital. She survived, though scarred. It was her own fault. What did she expect flaunting herself like that and then demanding things? Dale was still too much of a coward to do anything. He told him to pack a bag and start walking, because if he ever saw him again he would make him into pig food. He didn't have the guts but Colby left anyway.

He was nearly sixteen by then, so he applied to live by himself in an out of the way hunting cabin. He kept his job at the Juno Ranch, since he needed the money and was one of the strongest wranglers they had.

Colby was sixteen when he killed his first girl.

She was older than him, in her twenties, gorgeous, with this thick blonde hair and big blue eyes. He picked her up in a pub, and it was probably a miracle he got away with it, except she explained she had no family. No one to miss her. She told him she liked the dangerous guys, it gave her a thrill, and they got drunker and drunker and went back to his. She asked him what gave him that thrill. He killed her. He hadn't really meant to, not that first time, but it happened. He buried her far out on the free grazing land. Months later he heard they found her body, but it was decomposed beyond recognition.

Colby breathed a sigh of relief and wanted to do it again.

District Nine Female, Maizie Miller (16)

Five years ago

Her mother wouldn't stop crying. Maizie wrapped her arms around her legs and waited. There was nothing else to be done.

The cameras opened into a mountainous arena, rocky, topped with snow. The cornucopia was sat in a low dip, and the tributes Zinnia up around it. Maizie picked out Earp, with his golden blonde hair and strong build. He was glancing around himself, signalling to Poppy, the girl from their district. Maybe they were allying.

"He can do this," Maizie said, half to herself, half to her mother. "He can do this."

He escaped the bloodbath with Poppy, a sickle, and a backpack. The two of them found shelter in the mountains. Maizie had nightmares at night of him being slaughtered while she slept. She was pretty sure her mama didn't sleep.

On the fourth day Earp and Poppy were attacked by some kind of beaver mutt. They escaped, but Poppy's arm was badly mauled. The Capitol commentators said Earp should leave her, but he wouldn't. Poppy hadn't been some stranger, even before they entered the Games. She had been in Earp's class at school Maizie knew. They might not have been friends, but he wouldn't leave her.

They made it to the seventh day, and then they ran into the Careers. The girls from One and Four slaughtered Poppy, and the boys from One and Two hunted Earp down like an animal and put a spear through his back.

Maizie cried for days.

Everyone around her was so sympathetic. Maizie hated it. She hated their pitying looks, their simpering words, the way they looked at her. She would give it all up to have Earp back.

At night she dreamt of monsters with human faces, of mutts that tore her limbs off, of her brother lying in a pool of blood.

She never dreamt of him whole. She never dreamt of their childhood. She never dreamt of his loving smile, the way he could pick her up and spin her round, his hand ruffling her hair. When she saw him she could only ever see him dead.

The day she turned sixteen she realised she had lived longer than her big brother did.

District One Female, Diamond Blush (17)

Four years ago

Tiara looked incredible in her chariot costume. Her skin had been painted gold, her blond hair twisted around her head and face like a crown. She looked like a Queen. She looked like a Victor.

Diamond cheered for her score of eleven in training.

She clapped for her interview, when Tiara wore a stunning silver gown with a low cut front and looked like the picture of beauty. She smiled when her podium Zinnia into an arena of ice and snow and frozen marble statues that looked like her. It was obvious who the Capitol favourite was that year. She cheered and boasted to her friends when she scored four kills at the bloodbath, more than anyone in the past four Games. Five tributes froze to death that year, and two more were killed by mutts. Two of the Careers died of hypothermia, and the tributes from Two killed each other in a fight over a spare jacket. There was very little real competition for Tiara. Still, Diamond smiled and screamed and laughed when she killed the District Eight boy and emerged from that arena victorious.

But when she came back everything was different.

She had always been their parents' favourite of course, the golden girl, first place in the academy, but Diamond was still their daughter. She still mattered. Now though, Tiara could do no wrong. Even when she drank and passed out in the garden she could do no wrong. She was more than just their parents' favourite now though: she was the District's newest Victor, their golden girl, their newest hero, and Diamond…

Diamond was just nothing.

They moved into the Victor's village and Tiara mocked her. She drank, and she danced, and she drank, and she played music loud enough to shatter one's eardrums until the sun came up, and she mocked her. Diamond didn't volunteer; Diamond didn't win; Diamond isn't good enough, isn't pretty enough, isn't tough enough to represent District One.

Her parents moved on to fawning over her brother, because now they had a female Victor they wanted a male one, and what was Diamond?

Diamond was nothing.

She was nothing, and so she spent long hours training until she was more than nothing. She was the best. She was better than the best. She was the academy's golden girl, she was their favourite, she was their princess, their future Victor.

Just like all the other girls.

No.

"I'm not like them," she said to her reflection in the mirror, who was wearing her training clothes, a grey top and black trousers. "I'm better than them."

She was better than them. Her only real competition was Sparkle, who was an expert eighteen year old swordfighter. And they put her eleventh. Eleventh! Her! Eleventh was somehow even worse than lower down, because it meant she had only just been bumped out of those favoured to volunteer.

"There's always next year," said Platinum, her brother, rather unhelpfully.

Next year. Diamond didn't think she could take another year of this. And Tiara won at eighteen. If she won at seventeen, then she would be better, and their parents wouldn't be able to deny it.

District Four Male, Orion Achoda (18)

Three years ago

Astoria looked incredible when she danced. The dim lights of the grimy club reflected from her eyes and made her hair glitter and skin shine. She twisted and spun around the pole, playing in the light, dancing amongst the shadows.

"Do you feel as alive as you look when you dance?" Orion asked when she came down from the stage after her performance. She was the youngest of the dancers there tonight, one of the youngest dancers in the club altogether, barely fifteen.

"It's a buzz," Astoria replied. "It's like... like for a short while you can stop worrying about life and training, and where our next meal's going to come from, and all that matters is you and the music and the rhythm and performing. You don't have to think about anything except your routine.

He saw Astoria practising her routines, sometimes, when she thought no one could see. Secrecy was difficult in their tiny cramped house, and even harder when one shared a room. In the end, it was Astoria's idea. "You know," she said, "there are male dancers. And people pay more for a pair."

People, it turned out, paid even more when that pair was boy-girl twins with a heavy resemblance. And Astoria was right about the dancing. For a short time in his life, it felt like everything stopped, and there was nothing but him and Astoria and the music and the routine. Their reflections twisted together in the mirror, spinning, spiralling, the light playing across their skin. During some of their routines they ended up so close together that in the distorted shine of the pole and the oily floor their reflections looked like one person, one shadow with too many limbs. The women loved his figure, his physique. Pearl Cascade in particular would pay rather a lot for them to perform privately. They ate him up just as much as the men devoured Astoria with their eyes. And of course there were some men that watched him, just as Astoria's gaze followed some of her fellow female dancers, but what did it matter so long as they were watching and paying?

They danced in the evening and the shadows of the night, and during the day they attended the academy. When they first started it had only been for the food and education it provided, but they had come to enjoy it. And the Games were a way out. If he won, they would never have to dance again, they could do it only when they liked, when they wanted to, in clean halls, in carpeted rooms where no one was watching, even if having people watching was half the fun. If he won the Games it could be on their terms. If they wanted they could perform for Capitolites. He never imagined that it would only be him dancing, never, because they came as a pair when they danced. They weren't just two people when the music played. If he won the Games they would be free. Free of the tiny house that Halley worked so hard for, free of the masks, free of the lies.

The academy listed him in the top five students for the boys. Astoria's name was there amongst the girls. If he won, they were free.

District Eight Female, Tyla Calico (17)

One year ago