Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead & The Hunger Games or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: I recently watched The Hunger Games for the first time and couldn't resist the idea of a crossover. This is told in Aaron's point of view and the pairing is Aaric (Aaron/Eric). In terms of the Hunger Games universe, I am thinking this could easily fit in pre-canon, somewhere within the first decade of the Hunger Games. I am ignoring the age rule and keeping their ages within TWD canon. The setting is meant to show what the early years of the Hunger Game's might have looked like within the Districts, while showing backstory allusions to why District 8 was the first to rebel with the Mockingjay.
Warnings: adult language, adult content, references to an established relationship, angst, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort and violence.
Our names (on tongues that are not born)
"And for the men, representing District Eight, we have…Aaron Merchant!"
He had about half a beat to linger on the future that could have been. On the life that could have been before his legs started working and he stumbled forward. Carving a path through the staring crowd, barely feeling it when more than few of them reached out - skin to skin. As if their sympathy and solidarity might bring him comfort.
But there was only one person he wanted to see.
One person who could do all that and more.
Eric.
Where was Eric?
He'd known it was a possibility. He'd been forced to apply for tessera more than once. That and his age. His name had been in the selection glass since the Capitol had announced the game's creation. Everyone in the District knew there was a chance, a chance that this would be the year they were reaped. Everyone knew, and yet-
He lurched out of the crush dazedly, pausing heat-drunk on the bottom of the platform. Trying to fight the natural urge to run as the nearest Peace Keeper tapped his stun-stick pointedly.
"Well come on up, tribute! Don't be shy! The entire country is just dying to meet you!" the escort tittered, striking a pose in the center of the dais. Making love to the microphone as he tried to rouse the sullen crowd into a standard, Capitol-approved cheer.
The lump in the back of his throat was choking – thick – threatening to suffocate him from the inside out as he was beckoned eagerly up the stairs by a man in a glittering Capitol costume. He nearly tripped when the man yanked him up the last three steps. Pulling him close to his side - unnerving and unnatural as his pulse pounded in his ears – before the suit flashed him a painted smile and let go of a squeal of delight that seemed out of place amongst the muffled sobs and the whisper of weather-beaten fabric rippling through the square.
But his heart didn't truly stop beating until Eric stepped out of the crowd. All ruffled red-hair and pale freckles as his partner held his head up high, voice clear and strong before it shattered the hush that had stolen through the crowd.
"I volunteer!"
He was on him the moment the Peace Keeper shoved him through the polished, mahogany doors. Growling that they had five minutes or less before the Tribute was expected at the station and slammed the door behind him.
The sound was like parting shot.
A death knell.
The bellow of the canon every time a tribute fell.
"Aaron, I-" But that was as far as Eric got before he slammed him into the opposing wall. He choked his way through a hiccup, struggling to replace the fire burning in his lungs with oxygen. Trying to find the words he wanted to scream as he pushed his face into the vulnerable hitch of the man's throat. Breathing in the scent of him as Eric trembled with an anxiety that immediately diffused any bile he might have thrown at him.
"Why?" he shuddered – weak with it - shaking the man by the collar as his lover went limp in his grasp, forcing him to hold them both upright as Eric melted close. Thin fingers kneading into him as the sound of muffled cries issued from the next room over. Where the female tribute - a girl of barely fourteen - was being comforted by her elderly aunt and uncle.
"You promised. We made a pact, Eric! Why?!"
"Because I love you," Eric replied simply, voice soft but unbroken as they gave into gravity and slid down the wall. Falling into a messy pile of tangled limbs and desperate skin as he struggled with it. Nearly breaking apart all over again as his partner looked over at him in that way he did.
Talking with his eyes.
Talking with his soul.
Only this time, he wanted nothing to do with the words left unsaid.
"I wish you loved me less," he whispered, throat hitching. Thoughts reeling back to that moment in the square. The air above his head had been charged with relief and guilt – the after image of a couple thousand souls quivering with the knowledge that another Reaping had come and gone and they were still standing. Still safe. Still whole.
He'd tried to get them to see reason. To take him instead. Begging, no, screaming for the escort to bend the rules just this once. Something. Anything. But they wouldn't. If anything, the idea of a volunteer made the Reaping all the more 'exciting.' The others had held him back – Deanna and her sons - forcing him to watch as Eric was ushered on stage. Fussed over by the gushing announcer as he forced their hands up in a garish flourish for the Capitol cameras.
"No you don't," Eric whispered back, repeating it over and over into the sweat-slick of his temple. Rocking him gently as the recycled air rattled through the filters above their heads.
The salt-tracks of his tears soaked into Eric's shirt. Singular pin-pricks of sensation that pulled nothing but numbness from him. Struck by the realization that this time, there was absolutely nothing he could do. It was like something from the very pit of his darkest nightmares. Teased up from the sickest parts of him and willed into life for no other purpose than the pure sport of it all.
A bounty paid in blood and tears to a victorious Capitol none of them had ever seen.
He chanced a look to find his lover's freckles stark, highlighted over the unnatural pale of his skin. Radiating a humidity – a heat - he could actually feel despite the clothes between them. Any other time he'd figure the man was coming down with the pox or some sort of fever. But right now? In this moment? He knew. They were practically trembling with it. Struggling to hold back all the bitter words and find a way to say the ones they'd always been meaning to as their world narrowed down to a span of minutes and seconds that didn't seem long enough for either.
"How could you do this, Eric?" he demanded, feeling the sharp end of grief-stricken anger pierce through him. Leaking acrid blood all the way down to the very core of him as he gripped Eric fiercely. Hot tears rolling - blinding him – as he stole a messy, desperate kiss. "Why?"
"Because I know you," Eric murmured, shushing him, pressing an open-mouthed kiss into his hair. Voice strong and determined, trying to rise above the way he was quietly breaking. Unable to do anything but hold him all the tighter as somewhere outside, a monotonous chime – half past the hour - sounded through the drafty halls.
He could feel the minutes slipping away.
They were losing time.
No, it was being taken from them.
And for what?
The Capitol's amusement? Some overarching political game? Revenge? Power? All three?
Were their lives really worth so little?
"I know what drives you. I know what you want. What you've spent most of your life working towards. But now is not that time," Eric answered, so sure he almost believed it himself as his partner caught his gaze and held it. Refusing to give way even when the build-up of tears must have blinded him.
"I know you," Eric repeated, shaking his head, huffing a tired, scared little laugh into the plush of his cheek. "You'd go to the Capitol and you'd try. You'd spend that whole two weeks before the games talking to people. Trying to tell them what is happening here – in the districts – trying to convince the other tributes that there has to be another way. That they don't have to do this. That they shouldn't have to do this," Eric hummed, soothing and low in his throat as he inhaled shakily. Running his hands through the tangle of his short brown hair again and again, memorizing the feel.
"Eric-" he started, pained and shaken through. Suddenly wanting nothing more than to stop him there. To stay oblivious, at least for a little while, as he tried to picture what Eric needed to hear the most. If there was anything he'd gleaned through all their years together that would keep him alive in the arena.
"And you'd be right. Just like you always are," Eric continued, nearly tripping over the words in his haste to speak over him, to keep the flow continuous. Like his eerie calm was nothing but a house of cards liable to come down any minute. "But you'd also be wrong."
"Revolution? Social change? A happy ending? A better life? It all sounds great, romantic even. But you and I both know the most important thing about revolution is timing. And we aren't ready. The districts aren't ready," he added, shaking his head as a single tear made tracks down a spattered span of freckles. "The war did too much damage and what momentum we had stuttered after they bombed District 13. The people have forgotten. Slung low with what it takes to just survive."
"But that time will come. It will come again. You know it. I know it. And when it does, the world is going to need people like you," Eric finished, long arms wrapping loose around his shoulders, bringing them in so their foreheads were resting together. Breathing hard into each other's space as if the words themselves had some sort of physical cost.
"I need you," he countered, unwilling and stubborn.
"I know," Eric replied, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as their noses brushed. "That's why I'm coming back. That's why I am going to win. You need to believe that, Aaron. For me. If you do, if you believe it, then so will I. Believe it like you believe in a better Panem."
They were startled out of the moment when a door slammed the next room over - jarring through the uncomfortable still like something electric. "Times up!" came an unsympathetic growl. Answering an agonizing chorus of fresh sobs with the sharp crack of a vicious backhand.
He felt the beats between the breaths as Eric went rigid, eyes fast on the door.
"Promise me you won't do anything stupid," Eric demanded, finding his lips, off-centered and out of time as heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. Closing in on them as the grief roiling in his gut gave way to a dangerous, cloying rage. "Aaron, promise me!"
If he'd had the energy to look beyond what he was feeling in that moment, he might have recognized the fear there. The terror and uncertainty that blanched across that familiar face before Eric shuttered his expression. Brilliant blue eyes gleaming with unshed tears as Eric wrenched him forward - enveloping him. Holding him close and breathing deep as the blunt of his nails stung like claws despite the yards of fabric between them.
They wouldn't take him away.
He wouldn't let them.
He'd rather die.
Rather-
"I'd rather die a thousand times in that arena, than lose you once," Eric whispered, cupping his face in his hands as a calloused thumb rasped across the curve of his cheek. Thin chest fluttering desperately as the roaring in his ears became white noise - harsh and overwhelming.
He had his mouth open to answer.
To tell him that he loved him.
That he'd be watching.
That he'd be right here, waiting for him to come back home.
That he would believe.
Believe for him.
Believe for them.
Believe that they'd be able to-
But before he could wrestle down his pride, the door slammed open and half a dozen Peace Keepers crowed into the room, shouting - stun-sticks raised.
They were out of time.
When he looks back on it, he's always struck by the realization that he never remembers the rest in order. He remembers being dragged out of the Hall of Justice, hands and knees scoring across the gravel. The gentle feathering of the spring breeze on his overheated skin. But he also remembers the moment when the Peace Keepers exploded through the door. Tearing them apart as the blur of Eric's red hair lingered in the backwash of his fading vision.
He remembers Eric looking back at him as they marched him towards the tracks, lips moving - pleading. He remembers the soundless murmur of the crowd that'd gathered outside. An unwelcome audience to his breakdown as he fought back, screaming Eric's name.
He remembers a sudden pain squeezing in his chest when the Peace Keepers held him back. Forcing him to heel as they bullied him through the doors, shadows lengthening across the parched soil as they kept him there, silhouetted in front of the Hall of Justice the exact moment his last nerve snapped.
He remembers catching a glimpse of his mother in the crowd. Silent tears streaming down her face. Only she wasn't looking at him. Or even Eric. She was looking at the girl that had disappeared onto the train – at her crying aunt and uncle collapsed on ground in the center of the square. She was looking right through him. Right through Eric. It was like neither of them were even there!
He even remembers the firm of Deanna's hand curling around his shoulder. Feeling the vibrations against his ear as she spoke – trying to calm him down – before he let go of a wordless cry and buried his fist into the nearest Peace Keeper's unprotected gut. Slamming his elbow against the back of a neck when the guard crumpled.
There was only one thing he knows for sure fit at the end. And that was the picture-perfect flash of blue sky and the graceless arc of the truncheon as it connected with the back of his head.
He knows because it heralded the beginning of the end. The moment when he fell to his knees, hands scoring through the dirt, raking red through every vulnerable part of him as the second blow caught him off guard and the world went black.
But more than anything, what he remembers about that day was that the darkness wasn't comforting. It was pointed and without mercy. And worse, it had robbed him of that final glance. That last moment that could have been theirs as the train pulled away. Reaping a poem that had lived and breathed and called him home.
He didn't think there was anything in this messed up world that was worse than that.
Because that was the day he realized that revolution had a taste. Seeped in a brand of bitterness that refused to fade. Growing harder and harder to stomach as the years dragged on.
It reminds him of something Eric always used to say. That people were a lot like thread, like the fine clothing their district churned out for the Capital. When pulled taut, there was only so much stress that it could take before it split.
He just hoped, when everything was said and done, that the both of them would still be around to see that thread break.
The odds were never in their favor.
But that wouldn't stop them from winning.
Eventually.
A/N #1: Thank you for reading. Please let me know what you think! Reviews and constructive critiquing are love! – This story is now complete.
Reference:
*District 8: This area's industry is the production of textiles, at least one factory was primarily used for making Peacekeeper uniforms. It was the first district to rebel after Katniss Everdeen spurred the revolution.
*Aaron Merchant: I made up Aaron's last name as in both the tv and comic canon he doesn't have one. I chose the last name "Merchant" to go with District 8's theme of textiles.
*Tessera: are tokens worth a meager year's supply of grain and oil for one person. Applying for tessera puts your name into the Reaping more times. With a cumulative effect. Meaning you are more likely to be reaped from your District as your name was entered more than if someone did not apply for these government rations.