Author's Notes: This is a prequel, set seven years before Catching Fire. Note that I work in an AU and only treat the first two books as canon — not Book 3, not the movies; that's just how I roll. I do take bits and pieces from Book 3, and it's less of an issue in a prequel, but still.
Thanks to Jo for reading an earlier draft and for her kind feedback! Any errors that remain are entirely my own.
Anyone who wants to use my work as a basis for their own fanfic, fanart, podfic, translation, or other transformative work has my permission to do so.
Evening Tide
by Fox in the Stars
based on The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
1: Reaping Day
I'm in my nightmare again.
I'm a little way out to sea, on what must be a shallow rock because I'm standing in water up to my chest, looking shoreward at District 4 where it slopes down to the ocean in the moonlight. The flashes from the lighthouse catch in the ghostly smoke from the Cannery behind the hill and pick out the silhouette of the Justice Building. Further along the crest are the outlines of the mayor's mansion, the shops on the square, and Mags' house at the top of the Victor's Village. There are lights in her windows and in the windows of the other victors' houses where they zigzag down toward the beach, but they look like a few lonely candles off to the side of the crowded orange lights in the fishermen's houses that spill down the slope to the sea. The glow shimmers off the water, catching in between itself and its reflection the shadows of the docks, the black shapes of the boats all in for the night. I can pick out the light from the window of my parents' house and the shadow of their boat. I can even find my own house in the Victor's Village even though there's no light there.
There's no sound except the waves and the distant echoes from shore, but I'm not alone. Below the surface, there are other bodies in the water with me; I can feel them brush against me and just barely see them as pale shadows silently circling. If I try to move, one of them nudges me back. If I start to float up, one of them gently anchors me. If the current pushes at me, they hold me up against it. I can't count them, but I know there are exactly twenty-three of them. I can't see their faces, but I know who they are. They of all people ought to be attacking me. They ought to pull me under and drown me, but they never do. They just hold me here while I look toward home.
Eventually I wake up feeling vaguely-but-deeply disturbed, just like every other time I've had this nightmare in the past three years — since I won the Sixty-Fifth Hunger Games.
I know I'm supposed to have better nightmares than that. The trainers used to take us — one at a time, no reason to rub it in the Peacekeepers' faces with a group tour — for interviews with the victors, and if we were left alone together some of them would tell me about spending every night trapped in the arena and waking up screaming. But no, I just have this. If they could put it on television, no one would even know it was about the Games except me. Some of the details change, like how much light is on the shore, how choppy the water is or how high — sometimes it's as low as my knees, sometimes like just now it's as high as my chest — but mostly it's always the same, nothing to scream about. At first I didn't even know why it bothered me. Usually it comes a few times a week. Lately it's been almost every night, but I've come to expect that when the Reaping gets close.
Today is the day. The first blue light of morning is showing through the window. Between the nightmare and whatever I'm feeling about the Reaping, it's no use trying to go back to sleep.
I get up, open the window, take a deep breath that smells like dew and brine, and look out at the opposite view from the one in my nightmare — not in toward shore but out to sea, not clear moonlight but thick haze that gives the lighthouse a soft, pulsing halo. If I lean out and look to the side I can see the waterfront scattered with tiny, distant figures of people, fewer than on a normal day but going about some kind of business. The young "dock rats" are already combing the beaches and shallows for anything that will get them a few coins, begging the few fishermen out this morning for handouts or odd jobs. Two Peacekeepers stand guard by the gibbets, but the nooses and hanging cages are empty; the Reaping is enough excitement for today, and they'd rather show the television audience a pretty seaside where everyone is behaving.
Some boats are on the way out, fading into the fog. Out further than I can see this morning they can do some fishing and make it back in time. Out further than I can see on a clear day, the fishing is better, but even without the Reaping to get back to, you wouldn't go too far. Somewhere out there is the Line, the minefield the Capitol built to keep us from sailing away in search of some better place across the sea. In thick fog it would be dangerous even if they kept it marked the way they're supposed to, but the warning buoys are constantly coming loose and washing ashore and are never replaced unless we win the Games; three years after my victory, most of it is an invisible deathtrap in any weather.
And if there's something to the stories people tell about the Sirens, if there really are beautiful fish-tailed women out there beyond the Line singing to lure people to their deaths, then I think this silence, where every lonely seabird's cry rings through the damp air... I think this morning it would be too easy to hear them.
I see the familiar silhouette of my parents' boat among the ones heading out. I haven't spoken to my parents in almost a year, but I always look for them and for the boat that was half my home growing up. This window doesn't offer a view of the other half, the neat little house halfway up the slope.
Halfway up the slope wasn't only our literal address, but also where my family stood in District 4 — and where District 4 stands in Panem altogether. Not so poor you can't afford to have pride, not so rich you can afford not to have it. In our own case, we had our own boat and could keep it in trim. The food was simple but always enough; Mother would even bring home a bottle of wine at New Years and a small cake for my birthday. And there was enough left over for the friendly "loans" people like us were always trading back and forth to keep each other out of the clutches of the bankers — or of my parents' specially-chosen enemy, the Boatman.
I grew up seeing what he did to people. End up renting one of his floating coffins and you'd never catch enough to bail yourself out of the bills, let alone the repairs that you did for him at your own expense because your whole family would be held liable if the thing sank. You'd just keep struggling in false hope until you went under and he owned you. Sometimes he'd come walking along the docks to lord it over his victims and taunt the independent owners with "business propositions." My father never answered him with anything but a scowl and utterly forbade me to speak to him.
I grew up seeing all the alternatives to our place on the slope, because down at the docks everyone was mixed together. I knew the people further up from us, who could afford sonar for their boats and didn't have to worry so much about the Line. I knew a lot more people further down, the ones who didn't eat so well, who had to risk putting off repairs or struggle with shoddy nets, who fell into bank debts or ended up renting. When I heard that unmistakable khoom from over the horizon, I knew who it was that didn't come back, and sometimes I'd seen them starting to founder in debt, seen something in their face as if they could hear the Sirens all the way from shore. I even knew the dock rats who lived right at the water's edge. According to my parents, you were allowed to feed them if they were small and well-behaved or hire the larger well-behaved ones for odd jobs as long as you didn't pay them too much. I wasn't supposed to hang around with them, trading jokes and diving for a few extra coins' worth of shellfish, but I still did, and I knew their names, too — the ones who vanished to the Cannery or worse, got old enough to be targets when the Peacekeepers got bored and picked some poor, hungry person from the water's edge to hang for poaching.
The trainers always wanted us in the front row at hangings. They didn't make us kill poor kids for practice like I've heard they do in District 2, but they wanted us to get used to watching people die. "Don't close your eyes," mine would tell me. "Don't look away." And I didn't, but sometimes my own throat felt sore for days.
And my parents would just shake their heads. They might have been the only people in the district who could honestly say they were innocent of poaching, just catching a fish and eating it. We were well enough off to safely get away with it — unless we went too far and kept a swordshark or something — but that way, even as they resented the Peacekeepers like everyone else, they could still shake their heads at the condemned.
We could even afford that kind of halfway-up-the-slope pride and its odd rules. You never took anything more at the dock than was due for your catch as weighed, even if you knew the scales were rigged. You never asked to be given anything, even by people who owed you. Those friendly loans could never be called "gifts," but there was never more than a token expectation of repayment; help in kind was expected, but you asked for it as a loan rather than asking to be paid back. In fact, if someone made a point of settling accounts with you it was practically a snub, as if you were a banker and they wanted rid of you.
My parents would never even ask for anything from the trainers, who would have been happy to give them whatever they wanted in the name of keeping me well-fed and who were "borrowing" the most precious thing in the world, or at least they would have said so at the time. When the trainers came asking for their only child, no one would have blamed them for refusing. They didn't need to accept as a ticket out of financial ruin, and they looked down on anyone who would. But it was a proud thing, and for my parents, pride was everything. I was six years old, old enough to admire the victors and the older trainees but too young to understand the danger.
Reaping Day feels much more complicated now than it did then, when I was innocent enough to be taken in by the pageantry and applause. It might be more complicated even than in the years after that, when I came to grasp the whole strange mix of hope and dread, resentment and pride, and to realize that I was headed straight into its jaws.
Then the year I was fourteen, it wasn't complicated at all; it was terrifying. I wasn't one of the eager ones to begin with — although looking back, I tried so hard to be a good sport that everyone might have thought I was — and then my trainer took me aside and told me to volunteer that year, even though we usually don't put people up until they're sixteen. I knew I couldn't argue; the whole district turns its back on a "refuser" who takes the training and the promise of food and then doesn't raise their hand when told. When I told my parents, they were proud that I was apparently so skilled for my age. They didn't realize that the trainers were banking on my good looks and didn't want to risk losing them in the next growth spurt. And they didn't realize that I might as well have told them I was going to the arena. Tully — our Capitol escort, Catullus Seabright — always makes a show of putting all the volunteers' names into his hat and pulling one out, but you can tell it isn't really random. Anyone different or special is all but certain to be picked, and for a "Career" district to send a fourteen-year-old with a pretty face and a voice that hadn't changed yet? I suppose it was irresistible.
What happened after that everyone's seen in reruns; they seem to replay my Games more than most. But there's one thing they never show, although I'm sure it's on tape somewhere — the first thing Mags told me when she started coaching me:
"There's a way I can give you a good chance, but you'll pay for it as long as you live."
I've never forgotten the exact words I agreed to.
My parents have disappeared into the haze. They could even make a full day of it. If they weren't at the Reaping, the Peacekeepers would surely let it slide, but I imagine they'll be there on principle.
I can't just stare out the window forever.
After morning exercise and a bath, I gel my hair into the carefully-disheveled look my stylist loves and lay out the clothes he sent along for today. They're not so shameless as to be inappropriate for the occasion, but the neck is cut low to offer a tantalizing glimpse of my chest, the pants are conspicuously fitted... It reminds me of what I wore for that first interview with Caesar Flickerman. Back then, we knew what we were going for, but at fourteen, you had to be careful — "alluring, willing, yet innocent" was the angle. "Innocent" is long gone, but today "dignified" is standing in its place.
I put the outfit on, then cover it up with a robe. At first I tell myself it's to protect the clothes over breakfast, but it also makes it easier to look in the mirror. It's strange; in the Capitol, or in a television interview, I wouldn't think twice about wearing this — or rather I would and I'd be sure to make the most of it. Yesterday when the camera crew came to my house for a pre-Reaping interview, I showed them the new indoor swimming pool and invited the audience to my "fishbowl" wearing practically nothing. It's the thought of standing in front of District 4 dressed this way. Really, there's nothing left to lose, but I'd rather put on a robe and not think about it.
If the fog holds, I'll have an excuse to wear a coat until we're on the train. I take out a bridge coat: dark blue, double-breasted wool, mid-thigh length. If the fog doesn't hold — and it probably won't — I'll be baked like a clam, but that seems like an acceptable price. I could just put on something else, but I have to pick my battles with my stylist; a reveal on the train should be enough to appease him, and he could have done a lot worse...
The clock strikes seven, time to start breakfast. While I'm cooking, I hear the familiar sound of Mags unlocking my door and letting herself in. She's already in her chair when I bring out two plates of our district bread with smoked fish, eggs, and sliced oranges — the same breakfast she used to send me in the arena. This is the routine we've fallen into in the past year, even though my house is out of her way.
At least it's not as far out of her way as it might have been; usually the houses are given out in order from the top of the hill downward, but I got one further up — halfway up the slope is still the literal address — because the victor who lived here before me had committed suicide. Both of them had, in fact; I'm the third tenant, because of course the Capitol wouldn't listen to anyone's pleas to leave it empty. When I first moved in, some of the other victors warned me about the "curse." Back then, they kept asking if I was all right and telling me to call them if I ever started feeling depressed, but those days are long gone.
"Looking forward to seeing everyone?" I ask as I sit down with Mags.
"Some of 'em," she says, smiling.
I haven't had much time to get to know the other districts' victors, but already I see them as a wider version of our own Victor's Village. A few are almost normal. Some have problems with drugs or alcohol. Most are somehow off, but not so bad, even friendly. Then there are the ones everyone warns new victors about and tries to cover for — but Mags doesn't mean them, she's smiling at what a mismatched bunch her friends are. They talk on the telephone sometimes, but we can't visit other districts, so this is the only time in the year she gets to see them.
The rest of breakfast passes quietly; the two of us have been doing this for so long we don't need to say much. When it's time to leave, Mags obviously notices me exchanging the robe for the coat, but she still doesn't say anything. She doesn't have to.
Outside, the fog has nearly burned off; I'm baking in the coat, but I've endured worse. I carry all our bags to the train, where the porters have to insist on taking them from me, then we walk back along the side of the already-crowded square. The shops are all decked with banners and bunting, the band is practicing in their pavilion, and people are already selling funnel cakes, cotton candy, grilled eel with a special sweet-salty-spicy sauce, and deep-fried everything. Reaping Day here isn't as spectacular as it is in 1 and 2, but it's not dreary like in the Outer districts; in them it must be terrifying for everyone, with no trainees shielding the other kids.
The chairs, the microphone, and the Reaping Balls are all standing ready on the platform that extends out from the steps of the Justice Building. The cameramen are setting up; the massive main camera is in place, and they're testing out the hovercameras before turning the eye-shielding on. I don't see Tully yet. Behind the stage, a dark teal curtain has been hung up, and behind that is where the victors wait for their cues; this might be the only time in the year all of us are together in one place, too, and we're not the first to arrive and sit down.
My upslope neighbor, Old Killian, is already holding forth to anyone who'll listen. He's the reason they put people's portraits in the sky now. In his Games, almost forty years ago, he faked his own death and did it so convincingly that he had his last opponent convinced they were being stalked by a vengeful ghost. It was such a good show that the Gamemakers let him toy with the poor kid for days, but then they made sure the trick would never work again. These days, he's what you might call "a legend in his own mind." He can be fun to listen to sometimes, but getting a word in edgewise is a grueling and thankless task.
My downslope neighbor, Stella, is sitting quietly off to the side with her husband. She broke a nine-year dry spell for us when she won a sword-duel with an ogre of a guy from District 2. When I moved in, several people took me aside and whispered that she had murdered someone a few years after her Games. No one turned her in because of how it would reflect on our district, but some of the more functional victors sat her down and told her that if a second body turned up, the third would be hers. Since then she's gotten married and raised two children — one died in the Games, the other moved out and has their own fishing boat — but she still has a drinking problem, and everyone still locks their doors and warns new neighbors about her.
Killian's previous audience wanders off and he turns in our direction. "So, Mags, what do you think of this year's crop?"
"Best take 'em as they come, I find," she says. She never pays much attention to the trainees until they're chosen.
But Killian does, because he's always betting. Mags has been mentoring our tributes for sixty years, but he knows just how she should do her job this time and starts weighing up my old classmates for her. I only trained with them until three years ago; I'd be beneath notice even if he weren't refusing to acknowledge me for other reasons.
"I'm going to have a look at the square. Do you want anything?" I ask Mags.
"Funnel cake sounds good. Been a long time," she says, and starts to get up.
"No, I'll get it."
She nods in understanding and sits back down. Mags doesn't need any rescue from Killian. She was offering to come for my sake — the routine we've fallen into in the past year.
But that's where today is complicated in a way that Reaping Day never was. The square is full of cameras — some of them flitting around invisible, some of them surely on me every possible moment. Even if I'm not sheltering in the lea of everyone's respect for Mags, they'll all have to keep up appearances. It's pathetic. My old classmates' lives are at stake, and I'm worried about walking around my own hometown without an elderly woman to protect me, but that's what I've come to. I've been looking forward to it and dreading it. I have to at least try it.
As I cross the square, everyone gives me space, but that would be expected. Some of them even wish me Happy Hunger Games. I only hear one child who's too young to understand the rules.
"Mommy, it's him!"
"Oh, shush."
"But Mommy, you said he—"
"Shush, I said!"
The kid whines as his mother cuffs him.
The one place I decided to go while looking forward to it and dreading it was the grocery my mother always goes to. Walking through it by myself feels both familiar and strange. I linger for a while in the cool air by the seaweed and fish on their beds of ice. The fish still looks expensive, even now when I can buy all of it I want. At the counter, the owner's mouth twists up strangely, as if she knows she has to keep up appearances but is so disgusted she almost can't do it — especially when I smile.
While she's getting me some of the butterscotch candy in the window, I try my doomed strategy. "Have you talked to my mother lately?"
"She's in here all the time. Why?"
"Just thought I'd ask. I think sometimes she doesn't tell me things because she doesn't want me to worry."
"No, you let your mother do all the worrying."
That wasn't advice. There's some kind of hook in it, and I'll be better off if I can manage to put it out of my mind and not bite. For a little revenge, I hold out my hand for my change. The grocer sprinkles the coins onto my palm from six inches up so she doesn't have to touch me.
The funnel cake is relatively painless; the woman selling them just looks through me and acts like I was someone else. The man selling grilled eel, on the other hand, gives me a sunny voice and a wide smile so strenuously, cringingly fake that it's worse than the grocer, and standing next to the grill, the heat is starting to go to my head...
With that, I'm sick of my adventure, and the sight of Tully getting ready on the stage is a good excuse to end it.
I know things are bad when I'm going to Tully to find something genuine. I like him and I know he means well, but he does have a bad case of Capitol, and even beyond that, he's hard to pin down. He's one of those people like Caesar Flickerman who doesn't look old but has been there so long that he must be; I have no idea what his real age is. His hair is the old familiar wig, long and flowing like a woman's hair, and I'm sure the color said something about the ocean on the label. In some ways he's painfully oblivious; I once saw him hear an explosion on the Line and go looking for invisible stormclouds, where no one from District 4 would ever mistake that sound for thunder. In other ways, though, he's surprisingly clever, and with him there are always uncomfortable moments of not knowing which is which. I know this much, though: he doesn't have to pretend to be civil to me.
"Finnick!" he calls out when he sees me, and as soon as I've put the food aside he catches my hand in a firm shake. "You get taller every year — more handsome, too. Some ocean-going Siren is going to catch you soon, I'm sure, make all the girls in the Capitol cry." He's racking up points for oblivious already. In particular, someone should really explain Sirens to him before he foretells anyone else's immanent death.
But not right now. "Oh, you don't have to worry about that," I tell him with an assuring smile.
He smiles back like a co-conspirator. "Not so easy to catch, eh? I should have known. But what's this?" He looks at my coat. "Some new 'Man of Mystery' look? Very unseasonable, I should think; you look like you're broiling."
"No, I'm fine, really." This just gets me a look that's so bemused and skeptical and pitying that I rush not to leave it at that. "I'd hate to get anything on my clothes, you know." I realize too late that I've cornered myself into taking the coat off sooner or later.
Sooner. "Oh, don't stand there and suffer. I'll have someone fetch you a towel." There. Just like that, I'm defeated, and I think he realized it was a fight, but I'm not sure. If he did, he was probably just trying to put me at ease — another point for oblivious. In any case, there's nothing to do but unbutton the coat.
Tully helps me out of it and takes it over his arm. "Oh, my!" he says when he sees what's underneath. "You look positively ravishing!"
"Why, thank you." I reflexively reach for the coat.
"Oh!" He finds the main camera already on us. "I've ruined the reveal, haven't I? Terribly sorry!"
"No, it's all right. Don't worry about it." I finally get the coat back, but there's no point in putting it on again now, so I just throw it over the back of my assigned chair. I shouldn't have bothered with it. If I'd left the house like this I could have told myself it wasn't so bad, but now I feel like I've been stripped naked. My stylist always makes certain that sweat won't ruin the look, but it makes the breeze blow right through me.
Behind the curtain, someone does bring a towel and some damp cloths. Mags breaks off chunks of funnel cake for me, and I pull off bites of eel for her. Maybe I really have been spoiled in the Capitol; none of it is as good as I remember.
The band starts up and plays sea shanties for the television audience, then finally the national anthem, timed to end at the stroke of eleven. The mayor reads the treaty, then the names of our previous victors, and when our names are read, each of us emerges from the curtain, accepts applause from the crowd and a riff from the band, and takes our seat. Mags is the very first name; no one can see me yet, but I join in the applause for her. One by one we're called forward, in mostly the same order that our houses run down the hill. Scattered among us in three places are names with no people left attached to them; they're read out and answered with a mournful pause for the victors we've lost, including the two who lived in my house before I did.
One of them is only third from last. I spend the moment of silence alone behind the curtain with Hendrick, the victor before me. The neighbors try to warn women away from him. When that doesn't work, they pay the woman to keep quiet, partly to keep up appearances and partly because it's much better for her that way than it would be if she said anything. He flicks his eyes over me disdainfully.
Hendrick is called, and I'm left alone listening to the ovation for him until the mayor comes to the end of the list.
"Finnick Odair."
I go out with my heart pounding at the thought that maybe no one will clap, but they all do. They know to keep up appearances for the cameras — and so do I. I take a bow in my "positively ravishing" outfit and strike a pose in my chair with the wool coat cushioning against my back. I scan the crowd for my parents, but if they're here I can't find them.
It's Tully's turn now, and he gets up and gives his speech about how much he loves our district. I like to think he means it, but he's too oblivious and he's trying too hard.
Then he comes to the two Reaping Balls. The names inside them are practically meaningless here, as they will be every year unless the Peacekeepers decide to hang all the trainers. Or unless for the third Quarter Quell they decide to "remind the rebels that they left the Capitol no choice" and disallow volunteers, but why antagonize 1 and 2, the only districts that come close to liking them? The Outer districts might not even notice, and the Capitol is sure to come up with something that hurts everyone...
Tully begins the way he always does — "Who wants to go first? Ladies? Gentlemen? Show of hands?" This is clever, whether he realizes it or not. It gives any nervous trainees a little practice raising their hands; I admit it helped me. I don't think he really counts, he just declares a winning side — usually the boys, but this year he decides to change it up. "Oh, the ladies! Not to be outdone, eh?"
He reaches into the ball and pulls out a name. It's a shipwright's daughter, twelve years old, and she comes bounding happily up to the stage for her lucky moment of stardom. Everyone knows she's perfectly safe. Tully asks her a few friendly questions — her favorite school subject, her favorite fish, what she plans to do with the money when she wins the Games — and then he calls for volunteers.
The sixteen-, seventeen-, and eighteen-year-old trainees answer in chorus, and this is when the Reaping really begins. I remember all these girls from from training, and I remember which were the eager ones. You can usually tell anyway — their voices ring out clearer, their hands stretch impatiently toward the sky — and I just hope it's one of them who goes. We seem to win about every five years, and even if we win, only one of our tributes can survive; even as a "Career" district, anyone we send has maybe one chance in ten. It's better than, say, District 12 gets, but the odds still aren't in your favor.
Tully brings all seven girls who have volunteered onto the stage and writes down all their names, making a point of remembering which ones have volunteered before. Then, he puts the newly-made slips in his hat and pulls one out. Maybe it really is random this time; the girl he picks is eighteen, a year ahead of me, and I remember her as a good fighter but very quiet and serious, not someone you'd intentionally pick to put on television. Everyone applauds her. Tully tells the sixteens and seventeens to look forward to next year, apologizes to the one remaining eighteen because she won't get another chance but promises never to forget her courage. I like to think he's just acting.
Then it's the boys' turn. The name Tully pulls from the Reaping Ball belongs to a sixteen-year-old dock rat who mounts the stage clearly terrified that by some fluke no one will volunteer, or maybe just from standing in front of the whole district in his shabby clothes; I can't help but feel sympathetic. Tully tries a question on him, gets an unintelligible mumble, declares the boy speechless with excitement, then calls for volunteers.
One voice rings out louder than the rest. When Tully gets them all on the stage, the same guy practically bellows his name. I remember him. He's just my age, from further down the slope. He was always one of the eager ones, but this is something special — and Tully must be impressed, because that's the name he pulls out of his hat.
The guy gets his applause, the others are sent off with condolences, and then there's one last fanfare for this year's tributes with everyone clapping and cheering and the band playing out loud. The victors all stand and applaud and hope one of these two will have a chair beside us next year.
As they're led back through the curtain and into the Justice Building to say goodbye to their friends and families, the girl just looks straight ahead with determination, but the guy makes a point of catching my eye. His gaze flashes fire at me. The message is crystal clear.
"I am going to win and erase the shame you brought on us."
I give him a smile to say "good luck." I really hope he does it.
But nobody here likes it when I smile anymore. As he passes close to me, he breathes a word just loudly enough for me to hear.
"Whore."
To Be Continued...
