[Full Summary] AU. Districts 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9 are not inspired by Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's defiance during the 74th Hunger Games. There is too little unrest, too few rebels for the Second Rebellion to be a threat to the Capitol. Yet. Then Quarter Quell is announced. If Katniss Everdeen was fire, Adrian Valencia was smoke.
A/N: So. I'm doing this, I guess. Hunger Games fanfic inspired me, Miss M Cricket's 'Lady of the Lake' especially. I thought to myself, 'An OC in Hunger Games sounds fun. But I don't wanna pair my OC with Cato.'
It's pretty much an AU centered around my OC. The canon characters, I PROMISE, appear; but they're not gonna be focused on until later. So. If you're averse to OC's, this ain't the fic for you.
A note to everyone who's waiting for my other stuff: Sorry. It'll be a while. My muse is just all over the place.
WARNINGS! It's the fucking Hunger Games, there's gonna be a bit of everything. AU, OOC, OC-centric, violence, language, blah blah blah. None of you even read these A/N's anyway so whatever.
Also I don't own Hunger Games, just the OC's and the non-canon ideas. Like all fanfiction.
…
The projecting screen is in the square, bright and loud and demanding Panem's mandatory attention, and everyone stands still to watch it. Peeta Mellark has just proposed to Katniss Everdeen. They are the picture of blissfully ignorant Victors, of lovestruck teenagers, and it's made all the sweeter by the fact that both of them were the underdogs of the 74th. Who would've thought? District 12 now had three Victors: the drunk, the Girl on Fire, and the baker's boy who loved her.
Everyone stands still to watch it. They don't notice the tiny figure darting in between them, curling around their unmoving figures quietly, nimble fingers reaching into pockets and purses (of the more well-off citizens of District 12, of course). The little shadow masks her movements with the shifting of others' figures, approaching calmly and confidently though her hands are sharp and quick.
She's tiny, and if she weren't wearing nice, stolen clothing with a nice, stolen hood over her dark hair, the victims of her pickpocketing spree would be watching her more closely. With her olive skin, dark hair, and bruised arms and face, no one would be able to say Adrian Valencia is anything but Seam.
One of the children of the community home — and she has been for many years — but Seam nonetheless. Funny, the little thief thinks, that even in the most impoverished of Districts, people still find things to discriminate others for.
Adrian Valencia ducks into an alcove between two shops, hidden in the dark. There's plenty of stolen currency, more than she usually can get from one of these television gatherings; she can afford to shave off a few coins. Which she does, peeling off muddy boots and slipping a few coins into a tear between the cloth and the leather heel. She'll use the money to buy something to eat, or maybe medicine, when the Matron gets rough with her.
The community house Matron gets rough with everyone.
(There are bruises peppered all over her arms and legs and back, and there is a large one that takes up most of the left right of her face.)
After the District 12 Victor spectacle is over, Adrian Valencia walks in the shadows all the way to a small, nearly hidden apothecary. It's on the verge of being Seam, dusty and dark and cramped, but the Everdeens — the woman and her younger daughter, the one who does not twirl on screen and giggle, pretending to be a carefree teenager that she is not — have moved to the Victor's Village, so Herriot's is all the little shadow-thief can afford.
She is only seen once on her way, and that's because she spots loose change and darts forward to grab it. It is darker already, the sun is set and its light is making the sky a dreary-blue and darkening purple. A doorway splashes bright yellow light on her, and the respectable shop owner notices her at once, crouched with wide eyes before his doorsteps like a beggar or a scavenger.
"HEY! OUT! GET OUT!"
Something is thrown at her, and she dodges it with practiced ease. He stomps forward; she scowls, tempted to bare her teeth at him or to hiss angrily. If she had fur, she'd bristle, but Adrian Valencia is not a cat; she is a tiny scrap of a girl with bruises dotting her waxy skin and only a few coins to her name.
(She is so thin that she can feel the buttons of her back, the grooves between her ribs.)
Because Adrian is so thin, so unprepared, so weak, the man catches her wrist. His grip is like iron, grating on bone, and it's a combination of his strength and her malnourished frame that allows him to lift her off the ground by just her right hand. He shakes her, spittle landing all along her face, and then he throws her. She rolls once, twice, then scrambles up. (If she lies down for too long, she doesn't think she'll be able to get up again.)
"Damn Seam brats! Fucking thieves, all of you! Don't let me catch you here again, brat!"
Adrian Valencia snarls at him, and the door is slammed shut. She is left in the dark, a new set of bruises to her collection and a coin in her brittle fingers. Her heart burns with fury and humiliation. Don't let me catch you here again, brat. Don't come near me, monster. Get away, trash. Go back to the Seam. Go starve in an alley. Stop looking at us with your filthy eyes. Leave. Die.
No; she shakes her head.
The vaguest memory stirs. It's soft and reverent and gentle, blurred. It smells like hope, a scent she knows so well and loves and hates at the same time. (If this memory weren't here, she knows she would be dead.) It's a prayer in her head, the energy that fuels her nimble, thieving fingers and wobbling, determined steps.
She decides to go on to Herriot's. The sooner she can alleviate her bruises and sprains, the sooner she can return to the community house to give her meager coins to the Matron in exchange for more bedding. (It is supposed to be freely given, but so are a lot of things that are supposed to be in this world, and yet are not; Adrian learned this a long time ago.) More bedding means she won't freeze tonight, because the other children decided that there were too many in their room and moved all her things to the outhouse, which is fine with her; it means they will forget her more easily, and she won't have to bite ears and fingers off anymore. Adrian Valencia is very, very tired of having to claw and scratch and bite in order to protect her precious things.
Athea Herriot is a stout woman with flyaway grey hair tucked into a sooty, black cap; one of her eyes is burned shut, the other large and milky. She was probably once a beautiful woman, but the mines exploded years ago and Athea Herriot was caught in the fires. Her home is cramped with scavenged hoards of things, the ceiling strung up with herbs and dried plants that are no doubt from the Hob. She's good friends with that other old one, the one they call Greasy Sae.
"Back again, brat?" asks the hunched woman, her door spilling very weak light onto the little thief's figure.
Adrian Valencia nods, and holds out her handful of coins. Herriot looks them over carefully, then ushers her inside and slams the door. It smells like dust and something on the verge of rot inside the makeshift apothecary; Adrian knows not to wrinkle her nose, though. She has long trained herself to keep her emotions inside, and to keep her face blank. (That is how a community house child of the Seam survives, if they are not big and strong and pretty.)
"Matron catch you pickpocketing again, little thief?"
Athea Herriot is bumbling around, knocking containers over with too-wide, too-careless movements. Adrian watches her every twitch, her every stride. Even knowing that the woman is a healer doesn't calm her down.
(They are all enemies, these people of District 12.)
When she finally finds whatever she's looking for, she sits in front of Adrian Valencia and reaches forward. The little thief flinches, and Herriot has the courtesy to at least wait as she strips down to her thin shirt and patched trousers. Even Herriot flinches at the sight of her bony limbs, her bruised skin.
"Panem's pants, girl! You're a corpse."
Adrian looks at the healer coolly. "We are all corpses here."
Herriot twitches. "You speak awfully well for a little Seam bratling."
"And you're awfully talkative for someone who's a known hermit."
The healer clicks her tongue. "Cheeky little shit, aren't you? Well, gimme your arms. This will hurt."
It does. The paste is not Capitol-crafted, it's a home remedy, and though it will make the bruises and cuts heal faster — tomorrow, they should be at least sealed enough for Adrian to go mucking through without risk of infection — the ointment burns. She is used to the pain and the sting, and doesn't change expression. Herriot lathers on the grainy, bright green onto her arms entirely, and binds them with dirty bandages; Adrian will smell strange for a while, but she will be sleeping next to the community house's mass waste house, so she really doesn't think anyone will notice or care.
(Adrian notices, however, in her intent observations, that Herriot grumbles and groans, but takes her arm with surprising gentleness, brittle fingers like cotton kisses on her waxy skin.)
When she's finished, Adrian stands to leave.
"Stop pissing off the Matron. I don't want to see you here again, bratling."
She is in the doorway, about to dive into the night. It is strange; Adrian could swear that there is a note of fondness or worry in Herriot's voice. Herriot, who is old and worn and dirty, who is bitter and spiteful and lonely. Like so many of those in District 12, in the overwhelmingly huge Seam.
"I pay you." Adrian says, instead of musing further.
(No one has worried for her before. Herriot, no doubt, is worried about wasting her time. Adrian won't be tricked by softened eyes and gentle touches, not anymore. There are so few memories of those precious moments that she knows to trust. One tastes of hope, and she loves it so much that she isn't sure she even understands her own mind anymore.)
"Yeah, well, you're an annoying, cheeky, little waste of space."
The little thief nods. "I know."
She has been told this many times. Waste of space. Brat. No-good thief. Monster. No better than an animal. Get out of here. Damn community brat. Go away. You're nothing. You'll always be nothing. You're a little beast. You should go die. Go die.
Adrian deems to smile, and the expression on Herriot's face makes her think it is not quite as welcoming as most smiles. Perhaps it's the way she only lets her mouth slant a little, and her eyes are still as cold as District 12 nights.
"I know." She repeats.
There is nothing for her in this place. She will go back to the community house, where her books are waiting in their hidden little alcove, and she will lose herself in them until she falls asleep, stinking of burning bruise-paste and excrement. She will wake and fight for her right to eat (with teeth and nails and snarls), be beaten by the Matron (for being filthy, for being stupid, for being there), go to school and daydream the day away. The afternoon will have her scavenging for food and money. She repeats.
She knows. She repeats.
That memory plays in her head, all light and soft and pretty. A gentle voice whispers in her ear:
You deserve to live.
A prayer in the dark.
(What does she hope to live for?)
…
The screen is playing again. This time, though, it shows President Snow.
"On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children were dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district was made to hold an election and vote on the tributes who would represent it."
They chose who would die. She thinks it is rather poetic and cruel. (Though she does not like the Capitol for what it does, she finds that to be angry at them is even more difficult, more energy-consuming. So she can only watch President Snow as he inflicts his little cruelties on her people, her fellow 12's who hate her for existing.)
(You deserve to live, comes that whisper again.)
(Always again.)
"On the fiftieth anniversary, as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, every district was required to send twice as many tributes."
District 12's last Victor — the drunk, not the Fire Girl or the Lover Boy — won these games. Adrian Valencia wasn't alive for them, but she has stolen into the Archives enough to have seen them play out. She has watched many of the Hunger Games this way. The Matron has always told her she has an obsession with death.
"And now we honor our third Quarter Quell," says the gentle-faced, empty-eyed President of Panem. On screen, a yellow envelope is handed to him by a small child; small, in that the boy is younger. Adrian is still skinnier. That's the norm with these Capitol projections. Snow begins again, "On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that the Capitol holds the Games to both chastise and show mercy to them, and for the rebels to recall the last lessons of the Quarter Quells, there will be twice as many tributes once again. Two who are chosen, and two 12-year-old children who are Reaped."
There's a gasp and a wave of murmuring throughout the crowd. Adrian's thieving fingers still. Four tributes. Two who are chosen, two 12-year-olds who are Reaped. She looks up at President Snow and almost wants to congratulate him on the cruelty of such a Quell. She's watched the 25th Hunger Games; the districts only chose older children, ones with a chance of winning, but at the same time, those that no one would miss terribly. Outcasts. The 50th Hunger Games was a bloodbath of disgusting proportions; it went on for weeks, and Tributes were killed in the most sickening of ways, all for the sake of sponsors and gifts and entertainment and desperate, desperate hope. This Quarter Quell was a combination with a twist; to show the districts their own cruel side, their own selfishness between classes, and also a bloodbath where even the youngest and most innocent children would fall.
Adrian Valencia can't help but think of the last Games. There were two twelve-year-old children who come to mind; Primrose Everdeen and that girl Rue, of District 11. Just before President Snow's benevolent, predatory smile is blinked away, she thinks there is a smugness in his features. Ah. This is a message to Katniss Everdeen, who almost broke the balance of the Capitol and its districts. This is a call for the blood of children, to show that her mercy and honor do not matter in the face of the Capitol.
Of course, Adrian Valencia may be reading too much into this. She observes very intensely.
So she walks away, thieving money and goods.
(Her name will be in the Reaping twenty-seven times. She is only a little bit away from being thirteen, and the Matron has ordered her to take out tesserae as much as she can.)
(Adrian Valencia, however, is not afraid of death. She is obsessed with it, they say.)
…
In school, she does badly. There are too many people watching her, too many feet trying to kick her, too many hands trying to tear her hair; there are too many things going on for her to observe and be wary of for her to care about arithmetic and language structure. She knows these things already; Adrian Valencia is a voracious reader, and as taught herself all the way up to final year curriculum in her downtime between beating and thieving.
The Reaping is tomorrow.
Everyone is scared, and while some shrink in on themselves and squeeze their eyes shut and cover their ears with their hands, others are like animals. In a corner, they snarl and fight; they are aggressive.
She's not surprised when she sees that older boy, that second son of the Portshores — respectable merchants, they own a chain of stores and employ many others, the richest family in District 12 besides the mayor — cornering another boy in his age group, tormenting him. It is stress-relief, she knows this. They are all scared, they are all wondering if they will be having to slaughter twelve-year-old children in a few short weeks. But the boy, seventeen-year-old Amycus Selkirk, can't know that because he is being poked and prodded like a skittish, cattle.
Adrian Valencia glances at the teacher. She's seated by a window, overlooking the schoolyard where the seventeens are on lunch break. Mrs. Wellwood is lecturing about quadratic equations, which everyone is struggling with; but Adrian is not, so she turns her face back to the window, there Amycus Selkirk is clutching as a presumably sprained wrist and whimpering to himself.
The seventeens are all scattered around the yard, and if they aren't laughing and joining in on this sad show of mob mentality, they are eyeing the Portshore boy with disgust. Some, with admiration. Portshore is rich, after all; and handsome, Adrian supposes. What would cruelty matter, if a woman is cared for and warm? (And everyone knows that Portshore Sr. has been bribing everyone he's come into contact with not to vote for any of his children; though the eldest, Leohardt, is already twenty, he has four other, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked merchant children who are of Reaping Age.)
Adrian blinks. Where is Katniss Everdeen? She is seventeen, or so Adrian thought. She didn't know Victors were allowed to skive off classes. Peeta Mellark is at school today.
Ah, Adrian thinks, so this Quarter Quell WAS designed to take the Girl on Fire down.
Not in so dramatic a way that anyone would be able to tell, but enough for those who are clever enough; those who saw her little acts of rebellion in her Games, who noticed how that near-suicide wasn't a desperate act of love, but a challenge to the Capitol. Adrian Valencia saw that, and she knows she wasn't the only one who did. Perhaps the only one of her age, but there are dissidents everywhere.
It is too bad Katniss Everdeen is not charismatic enough to pull the districts to her side; Adrian Valencia thinks everything would be very different if the flames of the rebellion were just a bit brighter.
(But Katniss Everdeen, for all she is special, killed Careers without mercy, and was very close to killing her own district partner. The richer districts and those districts that prize loyalty and intelligence, they are not swayed by her sloppy, desperate honor.)
But Adrian Valencia is twelve, nearly thirteen. Preteens and barely-teens don't think about things like rebellion.
"Isn't that Livius Portshore?" comes a whisper.
She is not the only one watching the window, it seems.
"He's an awful person."
"Poor Selkirk."
"Do you think you'll get Reaped?"
"I'm thirteen already, I'm not in the running."
"You're lucky."
Adrian Valencia dozes off to the sounds of whispering children and shouting and whimpering below. If only the Games were just a few weeks later, she would be out of the running. She doesn't really want to go into the Games, after all. There are books to read, vids to watch, things to steal.
(She has always wanted to see what it would be like if she weren't in the community house anymore. She thinks it might be nice.)
When her eyes flutter open, school is just about over. She scribbles half of the right answers into the homework, wondering why District 12 even bothers with education for coal miners, and tucks the leaves of paper into her bag, which is hidden behind the curtains of the windows. If she takes her work to the community home, someone will destroy it. Someone will always destroy her things, so Adrian Valencia learns to defend them, learns to hide them.
As she leaves the building, the yard is empty of the seventeens, except for two.
Amycus Selkirk is sitting near the bushes, tear tracks down his cheeks and a hitch in his breathing, hiccuping from sobbing. He is not as bruised as Adrian is on a daily basis, and the thought of this merchant's boy crying over a bit of bullying makes her irritated. He is not as small as she is, he is not as voiceless. She doesn't understand, so she approaches quietly. She only wants to watch, to listen. Livius Portshore is speaking quietly to the crying boy.
Then Livius Portshore turns to leave, and shoves her out of the way as he does. He is not large, but his frame dwarfs her own in comparison; there is a world of difference between his toned body and her malnourished one.
"Out of the way, creepy-eyed brat. I don't have time for you today."
She looks at him coolly. Livius is not above tormenting twelves. She knows this firsthand. She suddenly wants to hurt him, remembering the bruises his hands have caused, remembering the humiliation his arrogant words leave.
"You will never be as great as your brother, Livius Portshore."
The boy's eyes flash, and he slaps her hard enough for her to fall. She is too winded to properly observe and relish the hurt in his eyes as he leaves. Then there is only Amycus Selkirk and Adrian Valencia in the schoolyard, and it is not the seventeen who stands first and approaches the other.
There is a tiny fragment of hope in Selkirk's green eyes as he looks up at her.
"Why don't you fight back?" is what Adrian Valencia asks the boy with a sprained wrist.
The hope dies.
"I'm not going to help you. You didn't even try to help yourself."
"Th-they're so m-much bigger tha-than me. A-And Livius i-is rich and powerful… I'm not g-going to sink t-to his level. I-I'm better than that. I-I don't have t-to be vi-violent to win." says Amycus Selkirk.
Adrian Valencia stares at him blankly. It is familiar. Too familiar. Like how little girls go around wearing braids and boots, trying to emulate the Girl on Fire. She sees it on the screens all the time, those Capitolites with their braids and expensive bread, like they think they can be Victors if they pretend to know their roots.
"It's not enough to be the underdog," she says, "This isn't television. Our Victors are alive because they fought back, in their own ways. There is no inspiration behind desperation. There is no strength behind indecisiveness."
His eyes flash with something that is almost shame. She nods to herself; it is right that he receives this chastisement from someone. Even if it is only Adrian echoing the sentiments of others, of her books, it is better than he knows.
(The weak are not celebrated. Those who are weak and become strong are.)
"Wh-what do I do?" whispers Selkirk.
She blinks at him. "That is not for me to decide."
Then she turns, rather hoping that Portshore — the second son, of course — will face a stronger-spined boy in the schoolyard; after the Reaping, that is. Not that Adrian Valencia really cares all that much, as none of it truly affects her, but she derives entertainment from these things. Everyone does; that's why the Hunger Games are so popular, no?
The Matron beats her when she returns to the community home.
She leaves and returns smelling of gritty, green bruise-paste.
The sun sets and the moon rises.
Adrian Valencia reads a book as her body throbs in pain; it's a book about medicine, one that Herriot gave her before she returned. She thinks that Herriot is annoyed at her constant presence. A shame that the Everdeens live too far now, in the Victor's Village, because Primrose Everdeen was a kind soul that charged her very cheaply.
She's settled under the window, hidden in the bushes. The outhouse's smell seeps into the paper pages of her books, she thinks, so she doesn't prefer it anymore. She listens to the other orphans talk to each other; Adrian can't sleep without sound, it's too unnatural.
"I don't want to go tomorrow."
"If you don't go, they'll know. They'll kill you."
"What if I break my leg?"
"If you're Reaped, you'll be the first to die."
"That crippled boy from 10 was fine for a long time, though."
"There are forty-eight Tributes this time. Twenty-four of them will be older, stronger. You'll die. A twelve-year-old has never won the games."
"Stop scaring her!"
"What about Finnick Odair?"
"He was fourteen."
"How do you know that?"
"That creepy girl told me when I asked. You know her, right? Really, really small. She's thirteen, though, I think, so she won't be Reaped. The bookish one outside."
"The one who bites ears off? She's scary."
"What's her name?"
"I don't want to go to the Games."
"No one does."
"Ariadne, right?"
"Adrian."
"Right."
"But if we go to the Games, we can be like Katniss."
"And Peeta."
"They're going to get married after the Games are over."
"They'll be happy."
Adrian Valencia sighs. They don't talk about very interesting things; she has better fun listening to adults in the crowd, listening to teenagers. But their whispers lull her to sleep with her book in her hands, a book full of fairytales, despite the shivering of her shoulders. Tomorrow is Reaping Day, where the votes for two children will be announced, and two twelve-year-olds will be chosen by Effie Trinket's powdery fingers out of looming glass bowls. Twenty-seven of those slips will be hers, and in a pool of only twelve-year-olds, Adrian Valencia has very bad odds.
She was going to be thirteen in a week.
…
They are lined up in the front, which is unusual. Usually the older ones are up front, the younger in the back. It is reverse this time.
She doesn't like the dress she wears. It's poorly-made and poorly-fitted, a limp grey thing hanging off a skin-and-bones frame held together with dry, dehydrated skin. The Matron combed her hair thoroughly, and she'd seen the comb afterwards, all clogged with black, tangly knots. The only mercy is that they let her keep her hair down, to hide her too-bright eyes in her too-sunken face; she is the only one, standing in a sea of girls with braids down their backs.
(When she glances at Katniss Everdeen, standing on the podium with a grim face, she wonders how the girl feels; she is an idol, a figurehead, and it seems she doesn't know how she got there. This is probably why she did not manage to started the slow-burning rebellion, not yet.)
Adrian Valencia watches as Effie Trinket, with her permed blonde wig and her dress made of monarch butterflies, walks up on stage. She is smiling and happy, though the grin is a bit subdued with how stone-faced District 12 is. It doesn't matter, Adrian believes; let the Capitolite have her fun. She does not know how very privileged she is, a butterfly beating its wings in coal dust. Harmless and unaware of the hurricanes she causes, the lives she displaces.
It's hot and miserable. It's always miserable in this district, though.
Effie Trinket taps the microphone, the light touches of her fingers echoing. She clears her throat.
"Well, well! Happy Hunger Games, everyone! And aren't we so lucky, Happy Quarter Quell as well!"
She is bubbly, Adrian observes. Much more so than before. (Pride, she thinks, pride in her district which walked away with not one but two Victors last year. She is hoping for a successful streak.)
"The Capitol would like us to call the names of the voted Tributes before the Reaping," says the woman cheerfully, her accent strong and booming. (She is an outsider, Adrian Valencia thinks to herself, and there is nothing — not even her misplaced, shallow pride in District 12 — that will paint her otherwise, this Effie Trinket woman, this Capitolite.) "So, if you please. Ladies first!"
Mayor Oversee hands two envelopes to Effie Trinket. They are yellow, just like the envelope the Quarter Quell speciality came from. It is probably the same in all the other districts.
"For the girls: Juniper Combe!"
Everyone turns to the fourteens. Juniper Combe is a Seam child, olive-skinned and dark-haired and exhausted-looking. She is tall and wide for her age, but not fat; just big. There is a primal terror in her eyes, a betrayed panic, and she looks around, begging for someone to save her.
"Come on up, Juniper Combe! Your district has given you the honor of participating in a Quarter Quell!"
(Your district has given you up to a violent, terrifying, televised death.)
(There is no Katniss Everdeen to volunteer for you.)
The girl, her legs trembling like a newborn foal, walks forward. She stumbles once, and is helped up by a quiet sixteen with a grim face and a steady hand. Then she's on the stage, and Effie Trinket announces and presents her again. There is light, pattering applause when it is called for. No one really wants to applaud; this is the face of the girl they — the adults, as it is only them who were required to vote, though the younger were allowed to if they so wished it — sentenced to die so that the other girls could be saved.
There is relief in the rest of the girls, in everyone who is over twelve-years-old.
Juniper Combe stands off to one side as Effie Trinket opens the next envelope.
"For the boys: Livius Portshore!"
A beat of silence. Faces are slackened with shock. Disbelief. Incredulity. And on some faces, unmistakable glee. (One of those faces is Amycus Selkirk, the boy with the sprained wrist.)
"NOOOO!"
"IMPOSSIBLE!"
"NO, NO, NO- DAD, LEO, HELP ME-!"
"LET GO OF MY SON! THERE'S BEEN A MISTAKE!"
"BACK AWAY! BACK AWAY OR WE FIRE!"
Chaos.
Livius Portshore tries to fight the Peacekeepers, tries to run, right until they threaten to fire on his family. Then he falls limp and sobs, just as his father — a portly man in his fifties, a wealthy chain-store-owner — collapses to his knees with tears streaming down his fattened, smooth face. His wife, Mrs. Portshore, is barely holding it together. The boy's siblings in the Reaping crowd look devastated and relieved at the same time. But there is only one face Adrian Valencia watches. Leohardt Portshore looks like the world has ended.
She knows him. He never has such expressions on his face. He is a doctor, a proper doctor, not an herbalist or apothecarian. He treats people both physically and mentally, healing their hurts with his smile. It is strange to see such an expression; Livius Portshore was hated enough for people to betray his father and send him to die. Why would such a scumbag's death bother such a good person?
She blinks slowly as the Reaping begins. Then she sighs.
"Samhain Vinpointe!"
You deserve to live.
"Savera Kithbain!"
Adrian Valencia steps forward as the applause dies. She is not so dramatic as Katniss Everdeen, she doesn't think. No, Katniss had blocked her sister from the stage with her body and screamed out her desperation and love. That was why Katniss Everdeen is the Girl on Fire. Adrian is not so hot-headed.
She approaches the stage slowly and quietly, and stops just before Effie Trinket. There are eyes all over her, making her rather uncomfortable. But she doesn't really care, because her voice is calm and steady and that soothing alto that no one ever seems to hear from the little thief, the little Seam rat who has been told to die too many times to count.
"I would like to volunteer as Tribute," says Adrian Valencia.
