Ablaze
Disclaimer: I'm not Suzanne Collins and I don't own the Hunger Games.
"Primrose Everdeen!"
Katniss pales, her hand becoming clammy in Gale's. She stands dumbstruck, blinking slowly a few times, before cold realization dawn on her and she startles, letting go of Gale's hand and making a desperate move to go towards Prim.
"Prim!"
No one but Gale and a few people standing close to her hear her.
"Prim!"
Gale grabs her forearm roughly, stopping her in her tracks. "Gale, let go! I n-need to get to her, she can't, t-they can't-"
"There's nothing you can do, Catnip," he says, pulling her gently back towards him. She shoves him roughly away with both hands, trying again to go towards the stage, but Gale grabs her, more firmly this time.
"Let me go," she insists, yanking her arm away, eyes frantic. She cranes her neck and tries to get a glimpse of her Little Duck. Prim couldn't have been reaped, could she? Maybe Katniss heard wrong. She only has the required amount of slips. Just four slips. Katniss thought the odds were in her favor.
"Don't make it harder for her, Katniss," Gale replies, his tone soft, and suddenly Katniss knows she's not hallucinating, though it seems safer to pretend she is. She opens her mouth to say something, but closes it, defeated. Tears prick at her eyes but she doesn't let them fall until her face is safely hidden in Gale's shirt.
To Gale's right, Mrs. Everdeen stifles a sob. Posy holds her mother's hand more tightly, looking scared as Hazelle attempts to comfort the trembling woman.
In the fifteen year old girls' section, all eyes slowly turn to a wide-eyed Prim.
"Come on, darling. No need to be shy," Effie Trinket drawls, beckoning Prim with manicured hands.
Prim snaps out of her daze and straightens up, her delicate features hardening. Her blue dress, a hand-me-down that Katniss wore at the 74th reaping, ripples with every slow step that she takes. Eventually, she reaches the stairs and climbs, taking her designated place beside Effie.
"Such a beautiful young woman," Effie says, beaming at Prim and then the crowd.
Silence.
Effie clears her throat uncomfortably and starts to walk over to the boys' bowl, her ridiculously high heels tapping rhythmically. She picks a piece of paper and takes her time unsmoothing it. Katniss still hasn't gotten herself to look up at Prim.
"Vick Hawthorne!"
Katniss's head suddenly jerks up, her eyes wide in horror. Gale tenses, his expression going from pained to flat-out furious. The same sort of expression he used to have while ranting about the Capitol in all its unfairness in the forest.
"Forty-two," he mutters angrily. "Forty-two slips weren't enough, but Vick's two slips are?"
Vick stumbles out of the thirteen year olds' section. Being well-fed under Gale's care and standing at nearly six feet, Vick looks like he could hold his own in the Games, but Gale and Katniss know better. While Katniss has taught Rory to hunt and set up snares, she hadn't yet considered taking along Vick for hunting lessons. After all, he had only turned thirteen a few months before.
"Gale-" Katniss starts, her voice weak, but gets cut off by a yell coming from the crowd.
"I volunteer!" There's some scuffling in the fifteen year old boys' section, but after a few heartbeats Rory emerges. "I volunteer as tribute!"
Everyone falls silent.
Gale fists his hands, cursing under his breath.
"Did I just hear someone volunteer?" Effie asks, bemused. District 12 has never had a volunteer. "Well, I believe that there's a manner of introducing the chosen tribute first, and then asking for volunteers," she trails off, sounding unsure of herself.
Rory completely ignores her, starting to climb the steps on his own accord. Vick starts to run after him, screaming his head off about how he can't do this, about how he won't let him do this. The slightest tremor runs through Gale as he starts through the crowd to retrieve Vick. A redheaded Peacekeeper, Darius, walks out from the outskirts of the square and intercepts Vick before Gale can reach the area in front of the stage. Vick struggles, kicking and blindly throwing punches, but Darious manages to get Vick's arms in some sort of fancy hold behind his back and hands him over to Gale.
Prim and Rory are now standing side-by-side. Rory is trying to look calm, but his twitching cheek gives him away, and Prim doesn't even try to hide her horror at this turn of events. Even though they're exact opposites of each other, both in terms of looks and personality, the two have been best friends for the majority of their lives. It was only last Sunday on Gale's day off from the mines that Katniss and Gale had been laughing in the woods about how they suspected Rory and Prim had developed small crushes on each other. As their lips met, Gale jokingly talked about having a double wedding if it ever came to that.
They might as well have jinxed everything.
Katniss doesn't know what to think, to feel anymore. Hoping for Prim's survival means the death of Rory, and over the years they have both come to be almost equal in her eyes.
Gale soon arrives back with a still-hysterical Vick. Hazelle quickly takes Vick into her arms along with Posy and hugs them both tightly, whispering things into their hair. Katniss glances over at her mother, who's already relapsing into her depression. She had gotten better over the past few years with the help of new combinations of herbs and having all of the kids around as a distraction, but now Katniss knows it'll be a long time before her mother even smiles again.
Katniss feels a familiar presence at her shoulder after a few moments, and she leans back into Gale just as Effie asks Rory, "What's your name, young man?"
"Rory Hawthorne," Rory says, his voice low.
"I bet my buttons that was your brother. Don't want him to steal all the glory, do you?" Effie says, still cheerful.
Rory mutters something in reply that must've been rude because Effie briefly looks horried and then straightens up quickly, speaking directly into her microphone.
"Let's give it up for the tributes for the 77th Hunger Games, Primrose Everdeen and Rory Hawthorne!"
Looking up at the tributes on the stage, the citizens of District 12 still stay completely and utterly silent. Most of the people from the Seam know Katniss and Gale, and probably recognize Prim and Rory and their last names. And if they don't know Katniss and Gale, they probably knew their fathers, or encountered Prim at some point, so either way almost everyone in District 12 feels some form of pity for the boy and girl standing in front of them.
It starts with Gale, and then Katniss, but slowly, everyone presses three fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it up high in the air where the Capitol can see them.
Haymitch, the only living victor from District 12 (personally, Katniss thinks District 12 will soon have no living victors, considering that alcohol seems to ooze from Haymitch's pores), decides now is the time to come onstage. Probably to embarrass himself, like he has so many times before. Haymitch walks towards Rory, eyeing him carefully.
Rory holds his gaze, and after a few moments, Haymitch breaks eye contact and says, "He's got...he's got," he stops, searching for the right word. "Spunk! He's got spunk! More than you!" At this point, he turns to face the cameras. "More than you!" He then proceeds to fall off of the stage and possibly break a bone or two.
Mayor Undersee quickly gets up from his seat and starts the long, dull Treaty of Treason, the same speech he gives every year at this point. When he's finally done, he motions for Rory and Prim to shake hands. They look at each other for a moment, hesitating, but then Rory steps forward and pulls Prim into a hug instead, the top of her head barely coming above his shoulder. Then they separate and Peacekeepers come to sweep them away into the Justice Building.
"You know how to hunt, right?"
"Gale-"
"You know how to hunt."
"Yeah."
"Show them how good you are."
"But I'm not-"
"Show 'em what you've got, Rory. Don't let them break you."
"I'll try."
Gale knows that the odds are not in Rory's favor. Although he's almost as good of a hunter as Gale, Rory's only fifteen, his mentor's a drunk, and he has Prim to worry about. But Gale knows he won't go down without a fight.
"Gale?"
"Yeah?"
"You would've done the same for me."
Gale nods, gritting his teeth.
He never needed an explanation.