A/N Because there are ony five factions opposed to 12 districts, a boy and a girl will be chosen as tributes as well as a boy or a girl. Tris doesn't know how to hunt. I DO NOT OWN DIVERGENT OR THE HUNGER GAMES! I have altered some aspects of the reaping ceremony. Also excuse any spelling or grammatical errors as my spell check isn't working. Enjoy! J
I flinched slightly as the tracker needle pierced my skin. The woman from the Capitol, who was administering the trackers, rolled her eyes at me and called for her next victim. I knew she was from the Capitol due to her teetering, elaborately styled, candyfloss pink hair- I had never seen candyfloss in real life, but I had seen it in pictures of the Capitol often enough. Her skin was bleached snowy white leaving it with a distinctly artificial look to it. Her make- up was slapped on an inch thick and she wore the strangest outfit I'd ever seen.
I scowled to myself at the woman's lack of compassion. She was from the Capitol and therefore didn't have to contemplate what would happen if she was chosen. Chosen to fight to the death. Chosen to kill for survival. Chosen to represent Abnegation in the Hunger Games.
Abnegation. That was my faction. The factions were supposed to to unite society; each faction represented a persons personality. There was Erudite who believed in logic and intelligence. Amity, they thought that pacifism, peace and happiness should be valued. Candor, they believed in the truth. There was also Dauntless, to be Dauntless you must be brave. Sometimes I wonder if there is a difference between Dauntless and Candor; to tell the truth, you must have an awful lot of courage. And then there is Abnegation. They believe that you must always be selfless and to not induldge yourself in the un-necessary luxuries of life. It is said that Abnegation and Amity are always the worst at the Hunger Games due to the fact they they're both strongly opposed to violence. However, the most basic human instict is to survive and we are but humans and are not immune to what our instincts tell us. It is usually Dauntless or Erudite that win and Candor stand a decent chance, but I can't remember the last Abnegation or Amity victor.
I smoothed out the creases in my dress and tried to regain some composure. It was the most stunning dress I'd ever seen. Simple as most Abnegation dresses were, but breath taking nonetheless. It was dove grey and came just below my knees as Abnegation thought it unacceptable to flaunt too much. Unlike most Abnegation outfits, the dress was made from a smooth, silky material I didn't know the name of. It was solid yet liquid, fluid was the best word to describe how it looked and indeed felt. It would've made any girl look radiant. Anyone but me that is. I was small and in almost every way, completely unextrordinary. The only feature that I even remotely liked was my hair; it tumbled past my shoulders in thick, shiny waves. It was a mixture of chestnut brown and honey blond. When I was younger, and my hair was much shorter, I would often have tantrums. I shouted at the top of my lungs that I wanted long and pretty hair just like the leader of Amity, Johanna. She had thick, dark, wavy hair which fell gently over one side of her face. My mother would laugh a little but then would tell me that I should not be vain and I should accept my hair as it is. That's what she said, but that didn't stop her from letting me grow it. She brushed it and wound it into a modest swirl at the base of my neck for the reaping ceremony.
Suddenly, from nowhere, I was hit by a solid and courage- shattering wall of fear. What if I would I was chosen and my mom would never again gently pull a brush through the tangles in my hair? What if she would never wound my hair into that swirl at the base of my neck again? What if I never saw her, dad or Caleb again? I pushed that dire thought to the back of my mind and tried to ignore the tight ache in my throat.
I turned around to see if I could see Caleb in the swarm of eleven to eighteen year olds who would later be waiting with baited breath as the Capitol representative pulled out the names of the doomed tributes. But at that precise moment, a peace keeper grabbed me by the upper arm and growled roughly, "How old are you?"
"Sixteen," I replied coldly. The peace keeper dragged me over to the roped in area marked for the sixteen year olds.
"Stay there," he said, shoving me into the section as if I was an animal. Peace keeper. How ironic. In the next 20 minutes, the rest of the sixteen year olds from Abnegation filtered in beside and around me. They looked just as scared as I felt. The larger of the boys tried to look unfased and calm, but it was the little things that clearly stated that their courage had somewhat diminished since entering the segment for the sixteen year olds.
I recognised most of the people there: from school and for those who chose to be home schooled, my parents as they were leaders of Abnegation.
All to soon, the woman from the Capitol- Effie Trinket- took to the stage. Like all the other people from th Capitol, Effie was dressed in one of the most eccentric outfits I'd seen. Similar to the woman who injected the tracker, Effie's hair was an alarming shade of pink, exactly the same as her dress. Her lips were painted magenta. Her skin was powdery white and her smile looked as if it had been carved into her face by a knife, it was too bright, too artificial, too big for the reaping.
"Welcome, welcome!" she said, loudly, speaking into the microphone. "To the 74th annual Hunger Games!" Her enthusiastic if yet slightly fake sounding introduction was not met by a cheer or even a solitary clap, it was the reeping after all. Effie then began a mind- numbingly dull speech about the importance of having two girls, two boys and one of either, from each faction fight until only one is left standing. I still fail to understand why we should have that as a constant reminder of our mistakes in the past. Surely we should put all of our failiures behind us and try to move on?
My feet were beginning to ache and inside my head, I was screaming at Effie to get the speech over with. After what felt like an age, the large town square was quiet. "Let us select the tributes of Abnegation!" Wobbling slightly in her sky scraper high heels, Effie Trinket walked over to the three large glass bowls containing slips of paper, five of which had my name written on. "As always, ladies first!" I waited, my heart pounding, for Effie to pull the name out. For several seconds Effie's hand danced about in the bowl, deliberating which slip to choose. Finally, her perfect fingers closed around a slip. A slip that will condemn someone to almost certain death.