"Did you see that? The kid just up and volunteered!"
"Hm."
"Not even his brother or anything – just some random kid. Probably twelve, judging by his skin-n'-bones figure. Or are you just all that way over in Six?"
"You are hardly one to talk about 'bones', McCoy."
"Don't you go laughing at me. I got that nickname because I won with every bone in my body broken."
"No. You won with three fractured ribs, one broken shin, a twisted ankle, and a compound fracture in your left forearm. The human body contains two hundred and six bones. I would hope an aspiring doctor remembered as much."
"Very funny, Spock."
The dark-haired man turned back to the projected image on the television, paused directly on the face of District Six's male tribute. Despite himself, Spock spared a glance towards it as well, curious to see the heroic idiot who volunteered. Eighteen. Blonde. Handsome enough, though evidently not very intelligent. Volunteers like him were always the first to die in the arena.
"If he is foolish enough to volunteer, it seems District Six will not have a Victor this year."
"How can you say that? Volunteering – for someone you don't even know – that's just about the bravest thing you can do!"
"Bravery gets you nowhere in the Games."
"You're one jaded bastard, you know that?"
McCoy unpaused the screen, and the action resumed. The crowd in the district square began to buzz as the boy made his way up to the platform, looking for all the world like a smug hero. To his right stood a frail girl with dark red hair, and a bit behind them Six's escort – a green-skinned woman known as Gaila – clapped her hands like an excited child.
"Ladies and gentlemen! I give you your seventy-fourth District Six tributes: Marla McGivers and James Kirk!"
Spock looked back down at his book.
"So, what do you think?"
"I have no opinion. It does not concern me."
"Doesn't concern you? That's no way for a mentor to talk."
Spock raised a single eyebrow.
"I won my Games last year. As there is already a mentor for my district, I am absolved of responsibility for the current Games."
"…you haven't heard, then?"
He didn't put down his book, didn't even look up from it. But he could not force his brain to absorb the words on the page.
"Heard what?"
I am not afraid. I am calm. If I am calm, they cannot hurt me.
"Pike shot himself this morning. They're keeping it quiet so as not to upset the citizens, but given that the only other Victor of yours is locked up in morphling rehab, you're next in line."
He could feel his heart begin to pound against his ribcage, and wisps of forcibly suppressed memories at the back of his mind flashed before his eyes, single frames of horrors best left unremembered.
A woman's sad smile as the desert canyon collapsed around her. The heat of lava scorching the soles of his feet as he clawed at the edge of a cliff. A taunting laugh. A mangled scream cut short.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you your Victor—
The sound of tearing paper brought him back to reality. In his shaking hands was a scrap that used to be a page in his book. Looking up, he saw his older friend looking on in concern.
"You ok there, Spock?"
"Perfectly fine." As slowly as he could manage it, he put the page back inside and closed the book. Clutching the closed spine kept his hands from trembling so. "It was simply unexpected news."
"I'm – look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so blunt."
"There is nothing to apologize for. Pike was a troubled man. This development does not come entirely as a surprise when one examines his past behavior."
"Still, I know he was important to you. Hell, I'm still grateful for my mentor. He was an asshole and he's long dead, but he somehow got me out alive."
"A task that now falls to me, it would seem."
McCoy's face fell as he realized he struck yet another nerve.
"You don't have anything to worry about. Really. At the end of the day, it's not your fault if they die."
"It is their own fault, then?"
The grizzled man went very still for a few seconds, then fixed Spock with a deadly serious look.
"You know whose fault it is."
He is correct. But it is futile to resist what cannot be changed.
The nineteen-year-old rose from his armchair, a District Ten relic that McCoy kept in his apartment to fight off homesickness.
"It is about time I get going. If what you have told me is correct, I must prepare to meet my tributes at the station as soon as they arrive."
"Spock, that won't be until morning. I thought you were staying—"
"Evidently, the situation has changed. It would be inappropriate to waste valuable preparation time here."
"God, I'm sorry, all right?"
Spock briefly turned from the doorframe to face his friend. McCoy was, without a doubt, one of the better adjusted Victors, but the Games had still taken their toll on his spirit. The man was no older than twenty-seven, yet his face bore many wrinkles, and his trademark cynical demeanor masked a desperate loneliness that few ever saw.
McCoy – 'Bones,' as the Capitol liked to call him – probably needed him to stay tonight, to help fight away the demons that always reared their heads on this dreaded anniversary.
But he had demons of his own to face, and two of them were named Marla McGivers and James Kirk.
"I must leave, McCoy. Thank you for your hospitality."
Spock walked out the door before the other Victor could get the last word.
The screens were everywhere. On the walls, in the windows, even projected on the back of the elevator. Though the walk from the District Ten rooms was not very long, Spock was bombarded with colors, faces, and Caesar Flickerman's brassy laughter. Every other word was 'Hunger Games', 'Reaping', 'Tribute.'
Curiously, he did not hear 'death' once.
I am not angry. If I feel nothing, they do not own me.
"And that was District Two, arriving at Central Station!" Caesar smiled, his face zooming back into view after cutting away from footage of an arriving train. "Most of the tributes won't get here until morning, of course. But until then, why don't we take a look at the Reaping that has everyone talking? Hmm?"
He laughed again, and before Spock could look away, the familiar scene of the District Six square lit up the elevator's walls.
"I volunteer as tribute!"
The camera froze the face of the blonde boy once again, and a tag reading 'James Kirk, 18' appeared beneath him immediately.
"In a turn of events that no one saw coming, District Six has its first volunteer in over ten years." Caesar seemed absolutely giddy, appearing in a side frame next to the video. "And what a volunteer he is! That hair alone has probably got sponsors lined up in the streets."
Claudius Templesmith, the more soft-spoken of the two, nodded his head. "I'm sure that boy's mentor is excited to have such a marketable tribute this year."
"Could District Six take home their first back-to-back win in the history of the Games?"
With a ding, the doors of the elevator slid open, and Spock tensed every muscle in his body.
Not angry. Not anxious. Not afraid.
His deliberately slow steps echoed across the empty corridor as he made his way to his apartment. As steadily as he could, he swiped his key card across the digital lock.
In reality, the pressurized metal door opened with a hiss.
In his mind, a geyser of superheated steam blasted up in front of him, and two young bodies just a few feet from his eyes cried out as their flesh melted away.
Marla McGivers and James Kirk.
Spock screamed.
