Title: Glory
Summary: Katniss wasn't the only tribute ever to volunteer for the Hunger Games.
I wrote this a year or two ago and somehow never got around to posting it.
Reagan stands with the rest of the sixteens in the town square. Her hands are sweaty and her heart is beating hard and fast.
"Ladies first," says Quintus Marvarion, smiling widely. He reaches into the clear bowl, filled with hundreds of little slips of paper. Reagan's heart accelerates. Ten of those pieces of paper have her name on them. Just ten, she tells herself frantically, soothingly, just ten.
Quintus pulls out the thin slip of paper with his long, manicured fingernails. He smiles widely and unfolds it.
"Jammel Sellers." He says.
Reagan closes her eyes and almost gasps aloud in relief. It's not her. It's not her. She thinks. She tries not to think of Jammel Sellers. The name sounds vaguely familiar but Regan refuses to remember where she knows the girl from.
She keeps her eyes shut tight so she doesn't have to see Jammel as she passes, so she doesn't have to recognize her as one of the many nameless girls that Reagan has gone to school with, perhaps played with, perhaps passed many times on the street. Reagan tries to think, again and again, not her, not her, it wasn't her. She was safe.
Her eyes snap open and she sees Jammel is already on the stage, mutely accepting Quintus's congratulations. Reagan turns away and searches the crowd for the eyes she wants to find.
Her gaze falls on Brand. He's already looking at her. He's smiling and Reagan finds she can smile back. She feels almost giddy with relief. One more year, she thinks, one more year of safety.
She feels only a remaining trickle of fear as Quintus prepares to draw the boy tribute. Brand continues to smile at her. He doesn't look worried, he simply looks relieved that it wasn't her who was picked.
Reagan barely hears Quintus as he reads the boy's name. She sees Brand's smile slip off his face. She sees his eyes widen in stunned disbelief. She dimly realizes something is wrong.
Then Quintus's voice echoes in her brain like a gunshot: "Brand Slater."
Reagan sees Brand turn to face the stage. Brand Slater. She repeats blankly in her mind. Brand Slater. She watches as Brand begins to walk, slowly and haltingly, as though he too is unsure if what he heard was true.
Then, suddenly, Reagan is screaming. "No!" the tears away from her tongue. "Brand, no!" this isn't happening. This isn't true. "Stop it! Brand, stop!"
Brand turns to look at her as she charges through the crowd, pushing the other children aside. She launches herself at him and he tries to push her away.
No, they won't take him. They won't take Brand. They can't.
"Take me!" Reagan cries, "Take me, instead!" They ignore her. Many hands come and grab at Reagan's arms. They take her and drag her away from Brand's body. The physically tear him away from her.
She's kicking and scratching and hitting every one of them that she can reach. Brand is pushed onto the stage where he can only stare as Reagan screams. Now they're putting something around her wrists. Some are yelling at her to be quiet. Others hit her repeatedly in the mouth until she can taste blood. She feels dizzy. She sees Brand's face, so pale, so desperate, looking at her, mumbling blankly to leave her alone as someone else pins his arms behind him. Then everything went dark, and she knew no more.
"Ladies first," said Quintus Marvarion. He smiles and sticks his long, almost skeletal fingered hands into the clear bowl.
Reagan stares as if she wants to bore a hole into the glass. The seventeens on either side of her are all fidgeting nervously but Reagan stands still. She wills him to pull out the name. She dares Quintus to do it.
Blood is pounding in Reagan's brain. Quintus smooths the slip of paper and reads loudly and clearly, "Sabina Cleric."
A trembling fourteen-year-old girl stumbles onto the stage and Reagan feels her lips twist into a smile. It doesn't matter, she thinks. No matter at all.
Quintus congratulates Sabina. Then he faces the crowd and asks, "Is there anyone who wishes to volunteer as Tribute?"
Reagan's face is still twisting into a smile. She knows she looks ugly and disturbed, maybe even a little mad. She steps forward, calling in a loud voice, "I do. I volunteer."
Quintus takes a moment to find her, a short girl as she is with indistinguishable features. She sees on the large screens surrounding the square that the cameras have trouble focusing on her, hidden among the hoard of other children. Quintus's eyes widen in surprise. The people next to Reagan gasp and whisper behind their hands.
Reagan doesn't care. She doesn't care about the stir she's created, the little buzz of gossip. She's already walking with fast, purposeful strides towards the stage.
She climbs onto the platform while Quintus regains his composure. He carries on with the protocol. He asks Sabina if she objects. She doesn't.
Then Sabina practically tumbles off the stage and into the waiting arms of her family, who are staring up at Reagan with mingled shock and unspeakable gratitude.
"And what is the name of our new Tribute?" Quintus asks.
"Reagan Slater," she replies stiffly. There is no glimmer of recognition. No one remembers the name. Reagan clenches her teeth hard, staring straight ahead. She knows all across Panem people are seeing her face on their screens. They're all wondering why she did it.
Some people think she's trying to steal the glory. The majority of them, Regan knows, think she's being brave or noble, sacrificing herself for Sabina.
But Reagan knows better. She knows better.
Sabina Cleric and her family come to see Reagan in her hour of solitude, set aside for saying good-bye to loved ones. They're the only ones.
They all want to know why. Sabina cries softly the whole time and Reagan finds she can't look at her. She doesn't even know who these people are. She owes them no explanation.
The mother hugs Reagan like one of her own, telling her to come back, where she'll find a home. Reagan finds her mouth twisting into that horrible, stiff, gruesome smile again. The whole situation is so achingly, terribly funny.
They don't understand. Reagan isn't coming back.
Reagan stands unmoving, still staring straight ahead, as her chariot rolls by the crowd of cheering people. Beside her, the boy tribute of District 9 waves and smiles, blowing kisses to the audience. Regan doesn't move. She doesn't care about sponsors.
Her stylist slaps her after the disastrous opening ceremony. For one second Reagan feels rage build up in her/ Her cheek pulses with anger. Her head snaps backwards from the force of the blow. She wants to strike back. She wants to lash out, kicking, screaming, tearing into anything she can get her hands on like she did at the Reaping, when they had taken Brand away from her.
But she feels her emotion slide away again. She feels dead, heavy, like it's already over. Nothing matters. Nothing has ever mattered.
Her stylists tell her to smile, to make a good impression, but Reagan barely hears them. Caesar Flickerman smiles and laughs and asks her questions, trying to coax exciting answers, what the public wants to hear.
Finally he asks the question Reagan always knew was coming. "Everyone is still buzzing about your volunteering to participate in the Games. So, Reagan, the question we all want to know the answer to: Why?"
Reagan hesitates, then she said clearly, loudly, boldly because she knows this is the last time she will ever get the chance to say it, the only time they will ever again hear his name, "Last year, my brother was chosen. I watched him as he died. Last year, I watched my brother get murdered on television."
"So you volunteered to bring your brother the honor he never got. Bring a little glory to the name?"
Reagan stumbles on her words. The gong sounds and she goes back to her seat. No, no, that wasn't it at all. She's come to die. She doesn't care about living anymore. With Brand gone there's nothing worth living for. All the same, Caesar Flickerman's words stay with her.
"So you volunteered to bring your brother the honor he never got. Bring a little glory to the name?"
Bring a little glory to his name.
She doesn't know what to show the Gamemakers. She doesn't have any special skills. But somehow she finds she wants to impress them. She wants to get a high score.
Reagan tries everything, from climbing to archery, but she doesn't think she makes any lasting impression. She feels heavier than she ever felt before when she leaves. She feels utterly hopeless. But she doesn't quite understand why.
To be hopeless she must have once had hope. But there was never any. Never of any kind.
Somehow Reagan finds herself surviving the first day. Her initial thought was to rush to the cornucopia and get it over quickly in the blood bath that always followed. But somehow she found herself running the other direction.
She climbs into a tree to spend the night and she can't erase the picture of Brand, on his first day in, doing the same thing. She can remembering the beads of sweat on his forehead, when the camera panned in for a close shot of his face. He hadn't tried to get it over quickly. He hadn't taken it for granted that he'd die.
Again, she hears Caesar Flickerman's words, pounding with the blood in her chest, louder and more insistent than she's ever heard them:
Bring a little glory to his name.
The rest of the Tributes must be putting on a good show, because it's been very quiet where Reagan's been hiding. She even caught herself, somewhere in the mysterious haze between waking and sleeping, foolishly hoping that the rest of them might kill themselves off. With the piercing sunlight of each new day, this thought is hurriedly smothered.
She first sees Fide when he's hunting in the woods. Before she only knew him as the boy tribute from District 7. He's tall and strapping, and she knew he, at least, was a victor of the fight at the cornucopia because he's got a heap of supplies in the corner of his camp.
He's also rather stupid, she realizes, and must be dependent on brawn rather than brains. She's come to this conclusion after the second night she gets away with stealing his stores without his noticing.
She tries it for a third night. Before she knows what's happened she's hanging upside down from a branch in a tree and Fide's face is inches from hers, red, twisted, angry, murderous. He's leering at her with a knife to her throat. Apparently he has noticed she's been stealing his food.
He slashes the rope with his knife and she crashes to the ground. Her shoulder aches, but it is nothing compared to the deadened thumping her stomach, the steely certainty that pounds through her head.
This is it. This is the end. She feels curiously calm and unconcerned. It's about time, she thought, that fate caught up with her.
He's kneeling on her chest and she hopes he slits her throat soon. She'd rather die quickly then slowly lie there suffocating.
"Caught the little snake that's been slithering into my campsite," he jeers. He pushes the blade against her windpipe. She can feel the cold edge tickling the soft skin of her throat.
She doesn't say anything. She doesn't know if he's waiting for her to plead, to beg for life. She won't give him the satisfaction. She remembers Brand, who died fighting, who glared his killer in the eyes until all life left his. She remembers his blood spattered the camera lens.
She spits in Fide's face. He lifts her off the ground and tosses her like a ragdoll against a tree.
Head spinning, Reagan still manages to look him full in the face as he advances.
He's breathing hard. He wipes away the spit on his face, but he doesn't come at her.
"I could use you," he says roughly, "we could help each other."
Reagan doesn't know what he's talking about. She's still waiting for him to launch himself at her, to plunge his knife into her chest. She's ready for him, ready to die.
It is, after all, what she's been waiting for.
He says, "We would be useful allies." and it dawns on her like the slowly advancing clouds of a storm.
Why would he want her? What use could be gained from having her as an ally? Then she has a startling thought, after all, she's made it five days. There are only ten of them left.
But she doesn't trust it. She's sure she'll fall asleep one night and get a knife in her back for her trouble. But Fide's still staring at her, knife held at ready in case she objects.
She thinks of Brand, who teamed up with a little girl last year, who watched her die and than was killed directly above her corpse. Her head jerks in something like a spasm, something she isn't even sure is a nod. Fide lowers his knife.
She doesn't trust him. She knows, any day now, he was going to turn on her.
He doesn't trust her. He thinks, any day now, she was going to turn on him. Sometimes, Reagan admits, she thinks so too.
It would be so easy, to get a knife and thrust it between his shoulder blades while he's sleeping. But she has a sneaking suspicion he's aware of everything she does, even when he's asleep. She, herself, doesn't let herself fall into more than a daze, awaking at the mere snapping of a twig or rush of artificial wind through the tree leaves.
It's on odd relationship but they seem to work well together. She's sneaking, he says. She's in charge of foraging supplies. He's in charge of killing. They manage to stay alive for another five nights. There are only four of them left.
Four left. Four left. Reagan thinks in her head, over and over again. Any day now, she thinks. Any day Fide was going to kill her, throw that knife into her heart just like he did to the girl from District 4 earlier that day.
Reagan has an uncomfortable, pressing feeling that gets stronger every hour that she should get to him first. But she feels her hands begin to tremble, sweat rises on her upper lip. She realizes she hasn't actually killed anyone yet. She doesn't want her first kill to be Fide.
That night they see the picture of the boy from District 2 appear in the sky. Fide and Reagan look at each other.
For one heart-stopping moment Reagan thinks this is it. The time has come. She grips the handle of the knife that's in her belt very tightly. But Fide only looks at her. He blinks.
Like the day they'd agreed to be allies, he doesn't advance.
"Tomorrow," he says simply, then rolls over on the ground so that his back faces her, leaving him defenseless. Reagan's stomach clenches and she turns her back, lying side by side with him, back to back. The thought lulls her to sleep like a song: Tomorrow.
"We'll have to end it today," says Fide. They're eating the rest of the food in the morning because they know it isn't going to matter later.
"Yes," she says, stuffing her mouth greedily, wondering why it mattered.
"Reagan," he says softly. It's the first time he's said her name and Reagan feels something in her chest twist. She realizes she's never said his name before, either.
"Fide?"
"I want you to win," he says.
"Why?" the word flies from her lips before she can stop it.
He looks at her. She realizes his eyes are brown. "My sister." His voice is halting, so painfully human. "She was twelve." All Reagan can think of, all she can hear, is the beating of their two hearts in that mess of undergrowth and trees. Brand screamed in agony when the knife was pressed into his stomach. Reagan can remember the pain written across his face.
"I want you to stay hidden while I take on the boy from District Three. I don't want you to come out unless I die. Then you finish him."
"What if you kill him?" Reagan whispers. She can barely hear herself. It might have been the wind.
Fide doesn't answer. There is no answer.
She does as he says. He creeps through the bushes. Almost as if it was prearranged, the boy from District 3 is waiting by the cornucopia. She watches as Fide and the boy circle each other, seize each other up, eventually launch themselves at each other, hand to hand with knives.
She realizes, with her heart pumping in her stomach, that she can't just sit here and watch Fide die, not like she watched Brand die, caught behind the impenetrable screen of the television. She screams as she rushes into the battle, the sound tearing up her throat until she can't breathe. Before she knows it she's covered in blood. She doesn't know whose it is, but it covers her hands and makes it difficult to hold her dagger steady.
She's dizzy and aching and still yelling and finds her hand plunging wildly, knife clamped tightly in her fist. She feels flesh that it surprising hard, pushes harder, hears screaming.
Then the boy from District 3 lies dead in the sand.
Reagan whoops, "We've done it, Fide! We've won! We've won!" but then she realizes they haven't won. It isn't over.
Her voice disappears and her knife clatters to the ground. Fide looks at her, horrified.
They haven't won. There could be no they. She can tell Fide is thinking the same thing. This was the end. This was the moment they had been dreading, unintentionally putting it off until the finish.
Fide makes an odd, sputtering noise in the back of his throat and he whispers, "I'm sorry, Reagan."
Again, she knows the blow is coming, and, again, it doesn't come. She hears Fide's frantic footsteps but they're leading away from her instead of towards.
Panic seizes her and she's up and running too. But he's too fast for her. She's screaming, "NO! No, Fide, no!" but he doesn't stop to listen.
All over again she's sixteen and she's watching Brand being stolen from her at the Reaping. In the distance she sees Fide as he hurtles over the side of the cliff, one of the many that ring in their little circle of dark forest and death.
She skids to a stop at the cliff's edge and sees his body, broken on the ground below. She hears the cannon fire.
She gets up and walks back to the place she killed the boy from District 3. The Gamemakers must have already taken his body because all that's left is a puddle of shockingly red blood and the knife Reagan dropped. The handle and blade glimmer red in the sunlight.
She falls to her knees beside the knife. She hears the commentator's voice boom, "Reagan Slater, I give you victor of the sixty-eighth Hunger Games!"
Reagan can't think straight. Blurred pictures of Fide jumping off the cliff, of her knife plunging into the heart of the boy from District 3, of Brand's name being called at the Reaping, flit through her mind. There is nothing left. There is no one left for her. She's dead. She's already dead. Never once did she think, I've won. Because she hasn't. She hasn't won anything. The knife is in her hand just as she hears the sound of the approaching hovercraft.
She hears the commentator, speaking frantically into his microphone, "No, no, you've won! What are you doing! Someone stop her!" The hovercraft is flying directly over her head now.
Reagan hasn't won. She knows she's got every single camera in the arena trained on her. She knows her face fills the televisions of every citizen of Panem. Reagan closes her eyes.
Reagan hasn't won. Bring a little glory to his name, she thinks. She doesn't know to whom she refers. Brand or Fide? They have somehow become interchangeable. She closes her eyes as she pulls the knife towards her chest. She feels the cold blade tickle her soft skin.
Bring a little glory to his name.