A/N: For Gabbie (marblesharp). I'm not sure what I was thinking when I wrote this, although that was December, so. Also, the only― spoilers (: ―fire (aftermath of one, that is) that I've experienced is a bushfire, so I'm not sure I got this exactly right? Sorry.
/
Hazelle meets Adam Abernathy on the first day they attend school. Their teacher places them in desks alphabetically, so after her mother kisses her goodbye, promising to be exactly on time to pick her up, she ends up on the left side of the classroom, next to a boy from the other side of the Seam. Their teacher introduces them quickly, since there are several more children waiting. "Hazelle, this is Adam." Hazelle is drawing invisible circles on the wood of her desk with her index finger, wondering whether her mother misses her yet, and what she'll do all day without her only daughter's help. "Adam, Hazelle." The boy― Adam, she guesses― looks up, slight curiosity in his eyes. Hazelle gives him a half-smile, then, interaction over, returns her focus to the knots in the table.
The day passes quickly― after all, it's her first day ever attending school, so for her it is utterly unprecedented― and at the end of it, Hazelle sits patiently in the classroom with the other children, waiting for her mother to collect her. Bored of the delay, Adam is persistently kicking the leg of his chair, pausing only when their teacher gives him a stern look from the front of the room. Eventually Hazelle scowls and twists in her seat to face him. "What do you want? And stop it."
He looks nonplussed. "It isn't your chair I'm kicking, is it? And I wouldn't be doing it at all if Haymitch was here." He goes back to kicking the chair.
She sighs. "Who's Haymitch?" Maybe he'll stop if she distracts him.
"My brother. He's ten." Hazelle can hear the pride in his voice. "He has to come and get me today, 'cause my parents are, um, busy ..." He trails off and kicks the leg of his chair again.
"Oh," she says quietly. Then, "My mother's coming to pick me up today. She says I'll be able to walk home all by myself when I'm older and grown up."
"When I grow up," he tells her, "I'm going to be just like my brother."
"Does he walk home by himself, too?" she asks curiously. Hazelle doesn't have older siblings of her own, just a sister rising two, and the only thing she knows of older children is that they trek home in groups after school ends and gather together for the Reaping each year.
Adam nods. "My mother says he has to, because she needs to work."
"You ready to go?" an older boy interrupts. "I told your teacher I'm taking you."
"Yeah!" he says, eyes lighting up. "Hi, Haymitch!"
Hazelle stares. The boy― Haymitch, she can put a face to the name now― is tall and thin like Adam is, with the same build and naturally dark complexion, but the resemblance ends there: his face is closed off and private, his body language wary. Adam, with his dimpled grin and generally cheerful nature, could not be more different
Adam shoves his chair backwards and grabs his bag, following his brother out of the room. "Bye, Hazelle."
She waves a goodbye to him, then spots her mother coming through the door. Hazelle explains the events of the day eagerly―"Did you miss me? My classroom's nice and warmer than home is, and a girl called Valerie is going to be my best friend, she said so; mum, Mrs Faulkner's teaching us to write!"―but she doesn't forget to mention Adam and their conversation, or his enigma of a brother.
/
Some five years later, it is Adam's eleventh birthday. The day dawns just like any other, but when Hazelle wanders a few streets down from her house to find him and wish him a happy birthday― he lives quite close after all, and it's become a bit of a tradition― the streets are much emptier than usual, and she can hear each of her footsteps on the pavement. The air is crisp and cold, too, and she shivers.
Hazelle finds her friend outside his house― she doesn't get a proper explanation for this, but it seems to have something to do with Haymitch's girlfriend― but a combination of cold and boredom drives them to the square, arguably the most interesting place for children in the district on Reaping day. Their curiosity often overrides the fright of the reaping, especially for the youngest among them.
The main south entrance and streets to the square are blocked off, but there are side entrances, albeit small ones, and they can still see glimpses of the scaffolding around the newly reconstructed stage. They set it up every year: perhaps other districts can afford to leave theirs up year-round, but District Twelve cannot, since they have a comparatively small population to the rest of Panem, and the most popular and important shops and buildings fringe the usually bustling square.
Hazelle kicks the dust from her shoes and pulls her coat a little tighter around her shoulders. "Look, they put the stage up in front of the Donners' shop this year. That's new."
"Yeah," Adam says. "Hey, do you think we'll ever get to go in there?" He stares past her wistfully, eyes firmly fixed on the sweetshop.
She shrugs. "Maybe they'll let us in after the Reaping today. Community spirit and gratitude and all that."
"Well, they don't take it, right?"
"I don't think so." 'It,' she knows, is the tesserae. "Doubt they need to; they've got the shop."
Adam kicks a stone moodily and shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. Hazelle watches the rock clatter against a wall as he answers her. "More for us then. But that bast―" Hazelle gives him a look, and he switches tack hastily, "Uh, Mr Donner hasn't let a kid into his shop without paying for years, Haymitch says, and his kids are, what, fifteen? It's a bit late starting now."
Hazelle lifts one shoulder in a shrug, secretly agreeing with her friend but unwilling to tell him so― especially since he used his elder brother as a source. Adam believes everything Haymitch tells him, while Hazelle is more inclined to question. "Maybe," she starts, but just then two Peacekeepers that neither of them recognise exit the square, blocking their view. Hazelle leaves her unspoken argument in the dust she and Adam kick up as they run.
The Peacekeepers make no attempt to follow them, but they keep running anyway, because there's a light dusting of frost icing the pavement, and they're almost the only ones outside this early on Reaping day, and because struggling for breath helps them forget that tomorrow at school there'll be two kids missing. And anyway, both of them know that even if you're running nowhere, it's much easier to keep going than to stop.
/
The next year, as it turns out, is a special one. Not only is it a Quarter Quell, but for the first time in history, the Games have been postponed. The earthquake that hit three districts hard and impacted the Capitol is all Hazelle's school talks about, and she even catches her mother discussing it covertly with the mother of the family next door. By the end of the week, though, she can no longer expect to hear about the natural disaster on five separate occasions everyday, because the Reaping has been rescheduled for the coming Sunday. And just to add insult to injury, her class has an upcoming test covering the Districts and their industries― since apparently no other class has ever taken it, they suspect it was brought in solely because of the earthquake. Hazelle's father is strict about school, so she is nearly more worried about that than the upcoming reaping.
In class on Friday, Hazelle is attempting to answer the revision questions on her worksheet when Adam kicks her chair leg. After the fifth time, she gives up on ignoring him and drops her pencil in frustration. "What?" she hisses. They aren't working in silence, but their teacher isn't tolerant of disruptions. Hazelle calls him strict; Adam calls him something unsavoury that he probably learnt from Haymitch.
"It's boring, that's what."
She sighs. "Can't you just do the work?"
"Look." Checking first to see whether their teacher is looking― a problem with your last name starting with an A is that you tend to be nearly always seated in one of the desks at the front― Adam slides his sheet across the desk. Every question is answered, if slightly messily.
He smirks when she groans. "That's got to be a first."
Adam raises his eyebrows and attempts at an injured expression. "I always do my work!"
"Yeah, and the President's my uncle."
Adam laughs in spite of himself. 'Could you imagine his―" he gestures to their teacher with one hand―"face if you really were related to Snow?"
She giggles, and their teacher turns to stare at them. His expression clearly suggests that their best possible course of action would be to return to quiet study. Hazelle sighs, pushes her nonexistent uncle out of her mind, and reads the next question on her sheet.
19. Name three districts with mining as their main industry, and give an example from each.
Hazelle can only think of two mining districts― Twelve and Two. There was Thirteen years back, but she's pretty sure that isn't the answer. She turns to Adam. "What did you get for the second last one?"
"One, Two and us," he tells her. "Coal, diamonds and, uh, rocks. Not necessarily in that order." He shrugs. "Just put down stone or something for Two. It's not like he's going to know the differen―" He cuts his sentence off abruptly when she nudges him― their teacher is staring again― but they still earn a lecture for the disturbance.
Once he walks away, Hazelle attempts to return to her work, but someone else kicks the back of her chair leg, and she twists around reluctantly. "Hey," Valerie King says quietly, the corner of her mouth tilting very slightly upwards, "Is Snow actually your uncle? I can really see the family resemblance ..."
Jake Hawthorne― Valerie's desk partner― and Adam's laughter is loud enough to get all four of them detentions for disrupting the class. She spends the rest of the class and most of the after school detention ignoring them, but quite apart from the fact they're her best friends, they all live only a few streets apart in the Seam, so ignoring them for long periods of time is difficult. They end up wandering home together afterwards, Valerie and Hazelle discussing excuses for getting back nearly an hour late, and Adam and Jake butting in occasionally with joking comments and suggestions.
"My dad won't like this," Valerie says mournfully. "It's got to be nearly five, and normally we'd be back half an hour ago."
"Tell him there were Martians," Jake says gleefully, and Hazelle swats him absentmindedly.
"There's no such thing," Valerie says uncertainly. "Is there?"
"No," Hazelle says. "Like other countries; they're just stories."
Adam grins. "Tell him Hazelle's uncle Snow caught you."
Hazelle groans. "Can we please drop that?"
"No," he tells her, smirking. For a moment, she almost mistakes him for Haymitch.
"I'll drop it if you'll help me with those questions," Valerie offers. "We have to finish them for tomorrow." She grimaces.
"It can't be that bad."
"I think I got up to maybe twelve?"
"Maybe it is that bad." Hazelle laughs. "But Adam finished them before I did."
Valerie looks at Hazelle doubtfully. "Really?"
"Why," Adam asks indignantly, "does no one believe I ever finish my work?"
"Because you normally don't?" Jake suggests.
Adam flicks his foot deftly and trips his friend, then promptly falls over him. In silent agreement, Valerie and Hazelle leave them behind. By the time the boys catch up with them, they have moved on from answering the questions on the worksheet verbally and are now testing each other on it.
"What is the industry of District Three?" Valerie recites.
"You read that off the sheet. And it's from the easy section."
"I did not!"
"You did," Hazelle says, and adds triumphantly, "I remember it. Because the answer's technology."
Valerie huffs. "Fine. And yes. It's your turn now."
"Um, give me two different types of rock mined in District Two."
"What kind of question is that? I don't even know one kind."
"It's extra credit! What extra credit question is easy?"
Her friend groans. "Fine. Uh, bluestone? Limestone? They're sort of stone, I guess ..."
"Redstone!" Adam offers, grinning wickedly.
"That doesn't exist," Hazelle says, exasperated.
"It's just as real as your uncle."
"That's not helping your case at all."
He scoops up a reddish-brown rock. "See? A red stone. Just as real as your uncle."
Hazelle gives up.
When they reach her house― she lives the closest to the school, though not by much― and after they arrange to meet before the Reaping, Adam passes her the stone. "Keep it," he says with the same grin he wore earlier. "It's special." He then ruins it by adding,"I named it Snow."
He's gone so fast that she misses when she throws the stone back at him.
/
Hazelle's first Reaping terrifies her. She thinks of those paper slips, two carefully marked with her name among the thousands in the bowl, and tries to stop her hands from shaking. It's a futile attempt, though. The group of twelve year old girls she stands with seem to tremble as a whole.
Across the square there is a small disturbance as the few chairs on the stage begin to fill. Once again, it is in front of the sweet shop and to the side of the Justice Building instead of covering it. This means that she can see when the escort, Heidi Roth, exits the building, slightly late, and bounces up the steps to the stage. In previous years, Hazelle has laughed along with the other children, too young to be Reaped, at their escort's Capitol fashion and hairstyle, which bears an unfortunate resemblance to a porcupine. This year, though, Hazelle can't see how she'd ever found it amusing. When the mayor steps up to the podium, she only hears snippets of his speech, and when Heidi Roth wishes them all a Happy Hunger Games, she clings to Valerie's hand and listens to even less than before.
As per usual, Heidi begins with the girls. She dips one manicured hand into the Reaping bowl and drags her fingers through the paper strips. When she finally selects one, the tension is almost tangible. "Lian Rosier," the escort announces. "Come up here, darling," she adds, when the girl in question stands petrified in the section reserved for girls aged thirteen. Hazelle can see her own expression of shock mirrored on the faces of the girls around her. That girl is only a year older than them; they've seen her in the hallways at school, walked home the same way as her most days. But now she stands on the temporary stage instead if them, and Hazelle isn't quite sure whether the emotion she feels is relief or guilt.
Once Lian is on the stage, the escort draws the next name. For a moment, when her fingers close around another slip, Hazelle sees talons instead of Heidi's perfectly painted fingernails. "Maysilee Donner," she says, smiling. Valerie gasps and Hazelle does the same― that's one of the sweetshop girls, she's a Merchant's kid, and they never take tesserae. But Maysilee Donner pulls away from her Merchant friends quickly, and she doesn't look like crying even for a moment when she stands next to Lian on the stage. It makes Hazelle wonder, and she misses the Reaping of the next boy, who's from the Seam. But she listens to the last one and crosses her fingers for Adam and Jake Hawthorne and Valerie's older brother. The name Heidi reads out is none of theirs, and for a moment she's swamped in relief. Then she notices whose name was read out, and she catches her breath for her friend as she watches Haymitch Abernathy climb the steps to the stage.
/
She doesn't see Adam for nearly a week after the Reaping. Her mother insists on it― "It's tactful, Hazelle."― but on the night of the Chariot Rides, she finally allows her out with just a promise not to bother her friend's family and to be back by six.
Adam says nothing when his mother lets Hazelle in with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, but he doesn't complain, either, just shifts over so she can sit down too. They watch Haymitch onscreen for perhaps the sixty seconds total that the cameras grant District Twleve. He's dressed in a slightly baggy coal miners outfit and stands next to the blonde Merchant girl, and she's not sure she's ever see him look angrier.
They end up watching the Games together. The Arena is the prettiest thing Hazelle's ever seen, but it doesn't seem to register with Adam― he's the most responsive when Haymitch scores a 9 and one of the boys from Four only gets 8, not even reacting during the Launch. Haymitch makes it through the Bloodbath unscathed, and seems almost normal in the days that follow, though he doesn't get much camera time. Sometimes, she worries more about the brother who's not in the Arena.
Though she goes to see him most days after school, they miss the most important moments of the Games because of their classes. The lunchtime recap often leaves the District Twelve tributes out entirely, and during the last week Adam starts skipping school to watch. Hazelle takes him his homework and wonders why his parents are allowing it, but she admits they're right when she misses the finale because of a maths class. That night, she leaves his work at his door and goes straight home.
/
Just over two weeks after the end of the Quarter Quell, Hazelle meets Adam before school― or had planned to, anyway. But although she waits for half an hour outside the school gates, neither one of the Abernathys appear. She takes this to mean that Haymitch won't return to school; Victors apparently don't have to, according to Jake Hawthorne. But walking home alone is boring without Adam.
When she opens the front door of her home, she knows something is wrong. Her mothers sitting at the kitchen table, and though she can't see her father, his boots, with coal dust ingrained into the leather, are by the door. Her dad works in the mines, but often when there is a fire or other disaster, he joins one of the crews detailed to, among other things, remove the bodies. When she'd been just rising seven and he'd spent a day or two out of the mines, she'd asked him why he did it, helping with the dead. "So no one else has to," he'd told her solemnly. "So nobody who doesn't need to see will see, like you and your mother."
She moves into the room warily, and her father, who hadn't been visible before because of his position, smiles at her when her mother speaks. "How was your day, then?"
"Alright," she answers noncommittally, still uncertain and more than a little worried. "We learnt about the by-products of coal. Adam wasn't there, though." When her mother glances quickly at her father, Hazelle tenses. "What?" She looks to her father, suddenly remembering with a shiver his words nearly five years ago. So no one else has to. So nobody who doesn't have to see will see, like you and your mother. "What happened?"
He sighs. "The Abernathys home caught fire last night," her father tells her. "And the two houses next to them."
"I'm so sorry, Hazelle," her mother adds softly.
She stares at them both. "It can't― They can't be just ..." Hazelle trails off as she registers the expression on her parents' faces, an expression that is easier to read than pages of writing and that clearly suggests the Abernathys hadn't simply lost their house.
"We don't know how it happened," her father says. "It seemed to be the stove, but we don't know."
But she'd seen him and his family just yesterday. He'd smiled and scowled and laughed and he'd been so alive. She stumbles backwards a step, as if the truth is something she can physically get away from. Standing where she is now, there is a table between Hazelle and her parents, but she is only a few metres from the door. "I'll be back soon," she tells them. "I promise," and then she darts quickly through the doorway before they have time to stop her. Hazelle heads almost unconsciously for a street she knows nearly as well as her own, but the house she's visited a hundred times won't be there― it won't ever be there again. She can run faster than she could a year ago, but not nearly fast enough to escape the shock and pain.
When she reaches the house, the last shred of hope fluttering desperately inside her dies. Her parents are right, and there is only charred wood and melted metal and ash left. There is so much ash, even for three homes. It lies heavily mostly on the ground, but there is still enough in the air to choke her when she steps off the path. She is more careful of the way she places her feet after that, but occasionally she breathes in only to choke on the air.
Hazelle contemplates turning around when she finds what is left of his room. She's not sure what drives her now, apart from morbid curiosity and the desire to know. There is!'t much left, really, except for the general outline of the room. Then her foot hits something small but strong, unlike the wood and ash and whatever else she's stepping in. She crouches down, and the object turns out to be a small stone. It becomes recognisable after she rubs off the dust on the hem of her shirt, and she swallows when she feels the way it sits in her palm. Hazelle remembers a day, a month or two ago, when he'd been there and his brother wasn't a tribute― or a Victor ―and though it had been colder, it had felt sunnier, somehow. She clenches her fist around the stone, brings the other hand up to her mouth, and screams. It's not very loud, but it hurts all the same, and she's not sure how long she'd have stayed in the ruins of his house― since he'd died, she realises, she's barely used his name once― if it wasn't for her father.
He wraps his arm around her shoulders as she shakes with silent tears and tells him about the time he'd given the rock to her and she'd thrown it away, and about when they'd visited the square on the Reaping day years ago, and about how the first time she talked to him was when he started kicking the chair and ever since then that'd been his way to get her attention. When they head home, she leaves it behind― like she tells her father, she doesn't need a stone full of memories when he'd affected so much of her life. Though it's ended up very late somehow― it's almost dusk― she can see his smile, bright in growing darkness.
(Later, another figure will visit the ruin. Alone in his house―alone in the village, for that matter― with monsters underneath his bed and a knife underneath his pillow, the Victor won't be notified of his family's death for nearly a week; it is purely chance that he chooses to pay them a visit tonight. Like Hazelle, he'll choke on the ash, but he'll muffle his scream with a curse and eventually a promise: "You'll pay for that, Snow.")