Shelter
Part I, Chapter I: Young and Sweet, Only Seventeen.
Ships: Brittana with Sam/Brittany, Santofsky, Puck/Brittany, Quinntana friendships. Very minor Quick.
Summary: The only thing worse than being reaped is volunteering for someone you love. Because then they have something to use against you. Brittany and Santana learn that the hard way.
Other: This is a Hunger Games AU. Every chapter will be named after a line from a Glee song. Author's notes will be bolded, so feel free to skip over them if you want.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or The Hunger Games.
I haven't written the whole story yet, but from what I'm planning, most of the story will be switching from their different perspectives but starting from the same point in time every other chapter. This is because certain events that happen to Brittany will be results of Santana's actions and vice versa and I want to keep the mystery, but still explain why everything happens. The exceptions to this would be the chapters when they actually have direct interaction in which the next chapter will pick up where the last ends.
Oh and if anyone has any questions, I can best be reached by my Tumblr. My URL is troutymouth.
When she was just a child, Brittany Pierce would sneak into her grandmother's room while her parents were at work. She would climb that small single bed and curl up beside her grandmother's warm figure. She would stay in her embrace for hours and listen as her grandmother read her tales from a diary of a relative of another lifetime. Another lifetime, but not another world. Brittany remembers the tales of simpler times when the most important thing in an seventeen year old girl's life was things she, herself, knew nothing of like prom or cheerleading or first dates. She never understood any of those things or how life could be so simple and so different from hers.
She didn't understand that life at all, but she knew it was better than how she, or rather, other girls her age were living in her time. So she longed for that life. She longed for cheerleading and prom and first dates and college and other things she knew nothing of. She longed for them and every year, since she was twelve, on the night before the reaping's of the Hunger Games, she would pray. She would pray and hope and cry to whatever higher power was out there, that she could live in that world. She was always a dreamer.
"Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?" She said, to the Latina beside her.
"No," The girl shook her head, with the corner of her lips turning up in a slight smile. "I didn't know that Britt."
"What are you laughing at?" Brittany asked, suddenly self-conscious. "I know I'm stupid. Just because you're my best friend you don't-"
"You're not stupid Britt. You're just really cute and you make me happy so I'm smiling, okay?" Santana responded quickly, cutting Brittany off. "Now stop worrying and eat your pasta."
"Can we still get our sweet lady kisses even though Finn left?" Brittany asked with a hopeful smile.
"Of course, Britts," Santana smirked. "After we spend some of Finnocence's money."
A tanned hand lowered from the wooden table to the seat of the booth and intertwined with a pale one.
"Awesome," Brittany smiled.
District Four
Six hours before the Reaping
"Brittany!"
Brittany rubbed her eyes as she sat up in her small bed and yawned silently. She stretched her arms out and groaned at the dull pain in her back. Another dream.
"Psst! Brittany, are you awake?"
She heard someone call from the small window parallel to her bed. She hurried over to the window and opened it. She stuck her head out to see her blond-haired, blue-eyed best friend wearing nothing but a pair of swimming shorts. The boy looked up at her and waved his arms to her window.
"Shut up, Sam!" She yelled back at the boy. "You're gonna wake up my parents!"
She shut the window, not bothering to wait for an answer from him, and continued to move around her room, looking for her swimming suit. She finally found the black one piece and started to take off her pajamas and pull on her swim suit. Once she was done, she took an armful of old coats from her closet and arranged them on her bed in a lumpy shape of a person. She stepped back, satisfied with her work and threw her quilt over it.
She slowly opened her door, careful not to make any unnecessary noises. Once her door was ajar, she tiptoed towards her parents room and pressed her ear to the door. Silence. She repeated the action to the door of her twelve-year old brother, Kyle. Again, there was not a sound to be heard. She hopped down the stairs of her little house and stopped in her kitchen, grabbing a slice of salty, fish-shaped seaweed bread from the loaf for a makeshift breakfast. She shoved it into her mouth, forgetting everything her mother ever told her about being ladylike, and after a few seconds of deliberation, she pulled another slice from the loaf. She opened her front door, revealing Sam, sitting on her front step, impatiently.
"Thanks for keeping me waiting," Sam bit, in a playful but teasing voice.
"I brought you breakfast," Brittany smiled, cheerily and handed him the bread. Sam took the bread, apprehensive to give in to the guilt food, but began to eat it anyways.
"You make it hard to stay mad at you, B," he said through a stuffed mouth. "Why were you so late anyway?"
Brittany looked up at the sun's position in the sky.
"It's like 8:10, Sam. I'm only ten minutes late," She laughed and they set off on the path towards the docks, barefoot.
"I never understood how you could do that," Sam said, staring into the sun.
"It's not that hard, Sammy," Brittany teased. "We learned how in school, remember?"
"Still," Sam countered. "You've never been late in ever and we've been doing this for ten years. You've been having those dreams again?"
"Yeah," Brittany whispered quietly, as her mind floated to fabricated memories of Santana. She felt warm suddenly. Sam or her mother and father would dismiss it as the heat from the sun, which always was warmer than other districts at this early in the morning, but Brittany knew differently. This kind of warmth came from the inside and moved out and she knew it was Santana.
She didn't know why she kept having those dreams. She and Santana would always be together and they would always be wearing those old cheerleading uniforms from her old family photos. They would be talking and laughing and sometimes, although she would never admit it, they would be kissing. In her dreams, they were always so happy. But her dreams were a whole other world. A world she wished so desperately that was her own. But in reality, the only place she saw Santana Lopez was on her family's television screen and on the stage during the Reaping.
"You need to stop with these dreams," Sam decided after a while of silence. "Seriously, Brittany. It's not healthy, you know?"
"Hey, we're here already," Brittany deflected with a wide grin. The path suddenly turned white sand that felt warm between their toes.
"Whatever, Brittany," Sam scoffed, recognizing her obvious deflection.
"I'll race you," Brittany said, playfully, and took off towards the water.
"Cheater!" Sam called after her and ran after her.
Five hours before the Reaping
"Do you believe in soulmates, Sam?"
They were floating, stomachs facing up, in the middle of the water, still warm from the cool night before. The familiar sounds of seagulls cawing and rushing waves are comforting for Brittany and in this moment, she feels like she could tell Sam anything and he wouldn't judge her.
"I don't know." Sam admitted. "Why? Do you?"
"It's weird, don't you think? That I keep having those dreams, I mean." Brittany replied.
"Yeah, it is," Sam agreed, half-heartedly, not wanting to encourage her.
"Maybe it means something," she mused. "Maybe she dreams about me, too."
"Brittany," he sighed, as he flicked water in the air with his fingers. "Santana is a Victor and a pretty hot one, at that."
"What's your point, Sam?"
"The point is she's not some fisherman's daughter, you know? She's probably got people everywhere throwing themselves at her and from what I hear about her, she probably welcomes them into her bed with open arms," Sam spilled out, not holding back for his best friend's feelings.
"How would you even know that?" Brittany rolled her eyes and asked him, incredulously. "You don't talk to her or anything."
"Neither do you," Sam fired back. "I was just saying what I heard from around town. Apparently, there's a lot of traffic in and out of her room."
"If you don't know then don't say mean things about her," Brittany interrupted.
Brittany turned her head away from Sam and closed her eyes. She attempted to block out his negative presence and instead focus on the sounds of the waves hitting her lithe body. Sam wasn't telling the truth. There was no way he could have been. Santana hardly came out of Victor's Village, let alone into the main part of town. No one ever talked to her.
"I'm sorry," Sam said finally, interrupting Brittany's thought. "You know how I get today. And I'm really worried about Stacy, too."
"I get it, Sam." Brittany smiled, bitterly. "My odds are the same, remember? Six for us and four for our family. And it's Kyle's first year in, too."
"Yeah," Sam trailed off and squinted his eyes into the sky. Brittany thought that she saw some tears in Sam's eyes, but she knew that Sam took pride in his strength so she ignored them. "It kills me that if she does get drawn, I can't do anything about it."
"I know," Brittany sighed thoughtfully. It wasn't fair. They were just kids. "Can we start walking now? I don't feel like swimming anymore."
Brittany stood upright and began wading back to the shoreline. Sam sighed heavily and followed. As they began to walk back to their houses, they saw a distant figure sitting on the edge of the dock at Victor's Village.
They were about one hundred metres away, but Brittany, hungrily tracing the vague silhouette with her eyes, could recognize her from anywhere. Santana turned her head, sensing someone's gaze on her, and her dark eyes locked with Brittany's. When their gazes held, it seemed to Brittany as if they spent an eternity rooted in their positions. Like all else had faded away, but the two of them, in that very moment. It seemed like that moment was the only moment in all of history that mattered. All else faded away but those chocolate-coloured eyes on the dock.
"Brittany," Sam touched her arm, lightly, and she was knocked out of her daze. "Let's go home."
"Yeah," Brittany tore her gaze away from the girl on the dock and the two of them began to walk off into the now burning sun.
Four hours before the Reaping
Brittany slowly and carefully closed the tall wooden door to her house. Once she was sure that no one had heard her arrive home, she tiptoed up her stairs, slowly, and made her way down to her little brother's room. She raised an enclosed fist and knocked on the closed door.
"Ky," she whispered, her lips in the crease between the door and the door frame.
She swung the door open slowly and peeked her head through the small opening. Her brother was wrapped up in his blue and white quilt with his tiny blonde head poking out of the top. His eyes were shut tightly and his lips were set in a straight line. It was obvious to Brittany that her brother was only feigning sleep. She stepped over his dirty clothes and a few pieces of paper on the floor of his room and sat on the edge of his bed, facing him. Her right hand moved up to his face and brushed a few wisps of honey-coloured hair from his eyes.
"Listen Ky, don't worry about today okay? You have one tesserae and everyone else has like ten so there's like no chance of you getting reaped okay? You're gonna be okay. Don't even worry about any of that. I love you, buddy," she whispered softly.
She lowered her lips to his forehead and softly kissed his sun-kissed skin. Then she quietly stood up, as not to disturb his faux-sleep. She crossed the short trip back from his bed to the door and looked back at her brother. She smiled softly, turned the door handle and opened the door. She was halfway out when he spoke.
"Brittany?" he called out her name and she turned around.
"Yeah, Kyle?" she responded, moving back into the room.
"I got three extra tesserae." And with that Brittany's heart stopped.
"What?"
"I wanted to help." Kyle offered, sitting up in his bed.
"I-" Brittany started. "You don't need to help, okay? Just leave the hard stuff to me. I'm the big sister; I'm supposed to do the hard stuff. Don't do it again, okay?"
Brittany strode over to Kyle's bed and sat beside him, throwing her legs out in front of her. She wrapped one arm around his shoulder and gripped her forearm with the opposite hand. He smiled up at her as she pressed a tender kiss to the top of his messy blond hair.
"I'm serious, Kyle. Don't take any next year, okay? Promise me." she whispered.
"Okay," he said as he nodded with confidence. "Okay, Brittany. I promise."
Five minutes before the Reaping.
Brittany was grasping Kyle's hand tightly as they stood in front of the enormous stage set up for the reaping ball. Her mother was standing beside Kyle, her arms tight around his upper torso and her chin resting on his head, and her father was standing behind Brittany, with one hand on each of his children's shoulders. Kyle was jumping back and forth on his heels, a nervous habit he'd had since he was a child, and Brittany's mother was desperately trying to calm her son down.
"Papa, can you see Sam and Stacey?" Brittany said as she stood on her toes and moved her head around, searching for the familiar head of bleach blond hair.
"Calm down, Brittany," her father told her firmly. "I'm sure they're close by."
"Ahem!"
A loud voice rang throughout the crowd and the nervous chatter subsided as a figure appeared at the front podium. Figgins, a short dark-skinned man who lived in the Capitol as a headmaster of a school, stood at the podium, leaning into the thin black microphone.
"Welcome to the 61st annual Hunger Games reaping ball in District Four. My name is Figgins and I will be drawing the names from the lottery today," he paused, waiting for an applause and a few people mockingly obliged. "Thank you, thank you. Before we get on with the reaping, I would like to introduce our past Victors that are not deceased. Let's have a warm, fishy welcome to the Victor of the 21st Hunger Games, Mags."
District Four's first champion was now a middle-aged woman, the leg injury she sustained from the Games was still evident as she hobbled across the stage. She smiled half-heartedly at the cheering crowd and slowly sat down on one of three chairs positioned beside the reaping ball.
"Here's the Victor of the 55th Hunger Games, David."
David Karofsky stepped out from behind a curtain and waved at the crowd with a cheeky grin. David had been one of the most dominating tributes that the arena had ever seen. He played the game alone, without deception and without allies, but also ruthlessly killed any other tribute that crossed his path with a donated fishing line. He waved to the roaring crowd one last time before taking a seat to the immediate right of the large reaping ball.
"And now say hello to District Four's youngest ever Victor, Santana of the 58th Games."
A thunderous applause broke out of the crowd. Men and even women, of all ages, hooted and wolf-whistled as the olive-skinned beauty sauntered onto the stage, signature smirk in place. She waved her fingers at the crowd and the cheers doubled. She took the empty seat, between Mags and David, and crossed her right leg over her left, dark eyes scanning the crowd.
"Wow," Brittany whispered, in awe of her beauty. Her father glanced at her quickly and shook his head, smiling softly.
"Now without further ado, I will draw the ballot for District Four's male tribute to the 61st Hunger Games,"
Figgins dipped his hand into the reaping ball and fished around for what seemed like ages. Brittany never knew how one boy and one girl were chosen every year without two boys being picked by accident or vice versa, and although she was more than sixty metres away, swore that she could see Sam's ballots. Figgins grasped a ballot and pulled it out. He glanced at the name printed on the sheet and cleared his throat once again. Not Sam or Kyle, Brittany repeated over and over in her head, like a mantra.
"District Four's male tribute for the 61st Hunger Games is Noah Puckerman."
Silence fell over the crowd and a few people gasped. Noah 'Puck' Puckerman was a strong, handsome seventeen year old boy who was known throughout the district for his signature black mohawk. Although the boy was a notorious womanizer, he was still well-respected throughout the town for sustaining the livelihood of his mother and younger sister since his father had disappeared after hearing rumours about District Thirteen having survived.
Brittany turned to her right and saw Puck carrying his sister and holding sobbing mother in his arms. He kissed them both on the forehead and whispered reassuring words of love and affection to them. He lowered his sister to the ground, kissed them both on the forehead once again and walked toward Brittany to get to the stairs on the left of the stage. His stride was confident and didn't falter once, but as he walked past Brittany she saw that his lower lip was quivering ever so slightly and his eyes looked glossier than she had ever seen. He stomped up the stairs and shook Figgins' hand with a clenched jaw. His eyes flickered to the Victors and rested on Santana, who quickly darted her eyes away from him.
"And now, I will reap District Four's female tribute."
Brittany sucked in a deep breath and screwed her eyes shut. This was it. Her last reaping. After this she would be finished. No more uncertainty and no more fear. She could live however she wanted.
"District Four's female tribute for the 61st Hunger Games is Stacey Evans."
Brittany's eyes shot open. No. Her chest suddenly felt heavy and it was like she couldn't breathe at all. How could it be? Stacey had one ballot in the lottery. One. No. This wasn't right. It wasn't fair. Before she could process what she was doing, Brittany broke away from her family and ran toward the stage. She had to do this. She knew that she had to. Sam would do the same for Kyle. She was sure he would.
"No!" Brittany heard her mother scream, but ignored her. She ran through the throngs of people, weaving in and out quickly, not giving herself a chance to contemplate her decision. She felt someone's hand on her arm, trying to stop her, but she pushed it away. She climbed the stairs and found herself standing beside Figgins, hands on her knees, panting.
"I would like to volunteer myself in place of Stacey Evans," she said shakily.
So there's chapter one. I would love if anyone who reads this shares their opinions and criticisms (in a nice way) through reviews. Reviews really do motivate me to write. Even a "good job" or something simple helps me to write. It makes me feel like someone's actually reading. So anyways, please review and I'll love you forever.