Summary: "My name is Loki Odinson, and I am here to watch you burn." Twenty-four tributes. Only about six are having anything remotely resembling a good day.
District One
If the Capitol could do one thing well, it was manage people's expectations. Every Hunger Games had a good mix of the usual with a sprinkling of the surprising, but a few things always stayed solid. District Two's Careers, rock-solid and strong and competent and a little sociopathic, but lacking the polish of One, was the first. District One's Careers, charming and witty with ridiculous names, was the second.
They were going to have one hell of a time trying to figure out this year's District One Volunteers, Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton, but they could get in line.
Natasha stood back on the stage, dressed in black and silent, making no move to cheer or blow kisses or tilt her shoulder and glance at the camera from a seductive angle. The only hard part was keeping the smile off her face as Pashmina raged below her, screaming so hard that spittle flew from her mouth, ruining her makeup and perfect hair with the tiny jewelled beads braided into her sculpted curls.
"You bitch!" Pashmina shrieked. "This was my year! Mine! Not yours, you jealous self-centred whore!" She struck out at the Peacekeepers holding her back, taking down three and making it halfway up the stairs before they got her. They let her struggle for a minute before pressing a hypnospray to her shoulder, where she collapsed in a shower of glitter.
At least the Volunteer whose life Clint ruined took it a little better. He didn't fight, or scream, just walked up to the stage and stared. "You'd better die in there," he said, all calm, which was pretty impressive for a guy named Platinum. Then again, they'd gone the ironic route with him, so. "Because if you come back here, you're not going to make it to the Victor's Village. I swear on the Capitol."
Clint didn't even look at him - not that Platinum or anyone else could tell, with those sunglasses.
Platinum was right, though. Natasha and Clint weren't walking away from this. Neither of them was going to waltz back into District One and buy a mansion like the others. They knew that. But they had a job to do.
District Two
Wanda so should have tried to get her name in last year. Bad enough being paired up with the Golden God, Son of Odin over here, who practically ate cameras for breakfast, but with the brother-rivalry that he was too stupid to see - unless he was a way better actor than Wanda gave him credit - well. She might as well just take herself out right now, since the audience would forget her immediately. Thor didn't know what his brother had planned, and no one was going to tell him, because it meant his genuine reaction would soak the underwear of every Capitol citizen from here to the fringe districts.
She almost considered telling him, but she was too damn professional for that. It meant, though, that Wanda didn't have much time to retool her thinking. Every year, District Two had two tributes - the one that you root for to win, and the one you root for to die. Originally, the plan was that Thor, with his outdated notions of honour and chivalry, would be the one to munch it, since no way could he spin killing his partner without breaking his image. But now, with the brother-on-brother stuff they'd be shoving down everyone's throats, Wanda couldn't afford that. She didn't have time to smile and wave and be the one to die for Thor.
No. She had to be the one he had to defeat after grinding his stupid little brother into the dust. If Thor was a god, and Loki some sort of imp from hell, Wanda had to be the devil herself.
And so, when she Volunteered, she didn't give the girl she'd saved a second glance, just brushed past her with a vague sneer of disdain, like she judged her for being weak - like the girl was so unworthy of the honour Wanda had now taken that she didn't even get it. All true, but Tributes didn't usually go so far as to make it text. Wanda did, sweeping her hair over her shoulder as she crossed the stage and curving her lips into the most wicked smile she could manage. Her stylists had dressed her in red, blood red, with none of the gold that accented Thor's clothing. Anyone watching would know they were not a pair.
Thor smiled at her and extended his hand. "I look forward to doing battle with you," he said, and the crowd roared.
Wanda looked him up and down and let her smile turn even nastier. "We'll see," she said, and licked her lips.
District Three
Half an hour left, and Tony would be done with this stupid ceremony forever. Oh, sure, they could make him go when his name was in that bowl up there, but good luck forcing him to show up once he was old enough. What were they going to do, fine him? Throw him in jail? Right, sure, do that, then see how much they liked it when all the lovely electronics Stark Enterprises sent the Capitol dried up.
Maybe he'd get a job in the Capitol directing the propos, if only so that the poor suckers still stuck out here, staring up at the screen and watching that boring excuse for a motivational soul-crushing tool, could at least have something interesting to waste their time. Too much guilt, not enough explosions. Or nudity. Any good PR stunt needed naked models. Throw in a few of the hotter tributes, that would get people paying attention.
Not that this was funny - even Tony didn't laugh when twenty-three kids bludgeoned themselves to death every year - but what could you do? No sense in crying over it. Tony drew the line at watching, at least - he'd turn the Games on, because the Capitol monitored households to make sure everyone tuned in, but then he'd go down to his workshop and start tinkering. Once he got the arc reactor working, he'd make a deal with Five. They could supply the Capitol with more power than they needed without taking a hit from their own resources, and maybe even send it out to the other districts, too.
Or maybe he'd just sell it directly to the Capitol, if they made it worth his while, except not really. Always sell to someone who couldn't take it from you, bonus points if they weren't completely sleazy. He had no desire to wake up without his legs. Either way, the sale from the arc reactor and all the money from the patent would give him the capital to continue working on his baby - enough advanced weaponry to take Stark Tower and protect it from whatever the Capitol threw at him. He'd turn all of District Three into an autonomous collective; nothing like nuclear standoff to take some of the pressure off.
Really, though, they should change the rules. It made no sense for Tony to stand here, in his final year with no tesserae - with his money, please - when the odds of his being picked were inversely proportional to those of his getting laid tonight. At least he had that to look forward to. Even if it was a sick excuse for the Capitol to flaunt its power - and for the people of Panem to show they really weren't any more evolved than insects who gathered around an injured companion to tear it to pieces - Tony did have to give Reaping Day credit. The "thank god we're alive" sex that night was always tremendous.
They called the name of the girl, but Tony didn't pay attention to the tribute. Whether she died or not, his watching wouldn't make the difference. He checked out the girls who hadn't been chosen instead, to see which of them fainted or sagged in relief or burst into tears and which would grab the nearest living being and kiss the life out of him out of the sheer joy of being spared. He found a promising one - red hair, nice, Tony had always been partial to redheads - when the entire square went still.
Whoops, he'd missed the boy being called, too, and that wasn't good; the cameras usually went to him to see his reaction, him being the sole heir to the Stark fortune, and Tony usually put on a show of looking sympathetic. He composed his features into an appropriate grave expression and looked around for the poor bastard. No one stepped forward. A coward, nice; that always looked good for the district.
Madina, on stage, cleared her throat and tried again. "Ahem," she said. "Anthony Stark? Anthony Edward Stark? Come on, don't be shy, now."
This time, the cameras found him, and the crowd began to turn. The redhead Tony had been eyeing gasped, a hand flying to her mouth.
The toothpick he'd been chewing fell from Tony's mouth. He tilted his chin so his sunglasses slid down his nose. "You have got to be kidding me."
District Five
Typical - he'd been clean almost a year. No incidents, no slip-ups, barely even a backslide. And look where it got him. He could've spent the entire year in a rage and remembered none of it, with none of the shakes and the repression and the fear of letting go, even a little, in case the other guy came back. He could've spent the whole last year as the other guy, and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference.
He should've known those self-help classes were full of it.
Nobody volunteered, big surprise there. Who'd step forward for the addict who'd trashed his classroom and almost killed a kid? Nobody, and nobody could be expected to, either. Anger bubbled under the surface, but he couldn't do anything about it, not here. Not on the stage. And once he was on that train, not much he could do there, either.
And so, because he had nothing else to do, and he was going to die and no one was ever going to sponsor him and he'd never finish his research, Bruce Banner smiled for the cameras.
District Six
It was all a joke. It was always supposed to be a joke, a strange, alternate fantasy world that never came true, but gave them something to do other than work in the factories and skirt the morphling dealers who hung on the street corners. Theirs was an escape that didn't require drugs or give them the shakes or pull them into strange artistic trances, though it had been just as addictive, in its own way.
But it was only ever a joke.
Ennis, the Capitol representative for District Six, frowned and read the name again. "James Barnes," he said, more clearly this time, though his enhanced vocal chords, meant to sound like a wind instrument, floated hollow over the square.
Steve turned, looked down at his best friend's face. Bucky stood frozen, eyes wide as dinner plates, and he took one step forward. He was only fourteen. He had no tesserae - Steve hadn't let him - while Steve had over thirty. Bucky swallowed. One more step. The crowd noticed him, parted to make room.
The sun never set in District Six; too many buildings, the above-ground train line and the monorail and the high-rises blocking out any light from the horizon. It was daylight, then it was dark, in Six, especially in the neighbourhood where Steve and Bucky grew up.
Another step. If Bucky's parents protested, the six feet of dirt between them and the open air stifled any sounds. Bucky's father had made District Six history by being the first tribute to be a parent at the same time. He hadn't made it past the bloodbath; after the Games finished, his mother dropped the infant Bucky at the doors of a church and walked out into traffic.
Steve knew it was a little weird that he hung out with a kid four years younger, but he'd never found anyone who understood him like Bucky. Not in the orphanage where they met, and not ever since. Plus Bucky was younger, but he had a full, healthy, non-asthmatic set of lungs that meant he could run faster, climb higher, make it up the twisted fire escapes and over rooftops while Steve struggled behind. He had energy, and life, and hope.
Another.
"There's a brave boy," cooed Ennis. The crowd stayed silent, judging. A morphling addict cackled somewhere, only to be silenced when the person next to him smacked him in the head, hard.
The training had been Bucky's idea, something to distract them when not in school - or, after sixteen, working in the factories. "We should pretend we're Careers," Bucky had said one afternoon, when they'd both returned to the foster home. Back before Steve was old enough that they sent him out on his own. "There's an abandoned gym down on 37th and Slope, I've been there, and all the equipment is still there. Good condition. Guess it's too heavy for anyone to carry away."
Steve had laughed and pressed a hand to his chest. "What? Why would we want to be Careers? We've got such a swell life right here!"
Another.
"I don't know. It'd be fun to train, wouldn't it? Pretend we were rich and living in a city that sees the sun. I heard the Career Centre - in the Nut - I heard it's up in a mountain so it gets sunlight longer than anywhere else in the district. Wouldn't it be a laugh, though? Train ourselves up, and then if the foreman tries to hit you again, we can show him."
He'd turned his face up to Steve, sincere and wide-eyed, and Steve couldn't tell him no. And so they'd started going to the abandoned gym whenever they could, using the machines and running on treadmills until they actually started building some muscle under the big-city pallour. Not that it mattered with Steve's asthma, not really, but Bucky took to it like District Four and water.
Another. A few more, and he would reach the stage. He didn't turn back, didn't waver, but his fingers plucked at the hem of his shirt, and Steve recognized that from when the monitors at the group home would yell at him.
Last year, the District Six boy died on the first day. He'd escaped the bloodbath by being fast, but that evening the Four girl stopped him, trapped him against a cliff face and gutted him with the harpoon she'd received in the Cornucopia. His guts had spilled all over the ground, glistening red, so red. The cameras zoomed in while the life faded from his eyes. Blue eyes, dark hair. Like Bucky.
Bucky had one foot on the bottom step when the scream ripped through the square. "I VOLUNTEER!"
Everyone stopped, looked around, the cameras zooming and panning as they searched for the one who spoke. It took Steve a second to realise that his breath scraped in his throat, that the words had come from him. He forced back the panic attack that closed his lungs and walked toward the stage. The same silence followed him, and Steve was glad for it. If Ma hadn't overdosed all those years back, she still wouldn't have understood. Steve had no memories of her without the yellow skin and rolling eyes of an addict. She would have ruined this, somehow.
"NO!" Bucky shrieked. "Steve - Cap - no!"
Bucky had started calling him Captain - something he read in an old book once - as a joke. Always the jokes. Steve looked up at the stage, at the row of Peacekeepers, and gave them a hard nod. He stopped in front of Bucky and held his shoulders. "Listen, you're going to stay here, and you're going to stay alive, and stay smart, you hear me?" Steve demanded. "No morphling, I don't care what happens. Stay in school, get a job when you're old enough."
A Peacekeeper took Steve's arm, but he shook them off. "Promise me!" Steve commanded. "I want you to promise me that you'll be smart. You'll be okay."
"I promise," Bucky choked out. "Just, no, Cap, it should be me, your asthma, you can't -"
They tugged him away, then, and Steve mounted the steps up to the platform. The crowd moved closer, milling, but still left a wide, almost respectful space around Bucky. Steve kept his eyes fixed on his friend. When Ennis called the name of the female tribute - Carol Danvers - Steve hardly registered it.
Steve had no possessions, no tokens, nothing. He waited, alone, for over an hour after the Reaping, and though with every breath his lungs threatened to close and make this whole game irrelevant, he knew that at least he'd kept Bucky safe. At least he had that much. The door opened, and he jumped, but the Peacekeeper only stepped aside, revealing Bucky standing behind him. "You have five minutes," said the guard, and the door shut.
Bucky flung himself at Steve, wrapping him in a hug so tight that Steve coughed. "You shouldn't have done that," Bucky said, eyes red, but he'd set his jaw now, and forced the tears to stop. He stood up straight and gave Steve the sharpest, most military salute. "In return I get to ask you a favour, right? That's how it works?"
Steve didn't know about that, but at the same time, he couldn't say no, either. "Name it," he said.
"Come back." Bucky's voice broke, and he swiped an angry hand across his eyes. "Come back to me. You'll be rich, and I can leave the orphanage and stop being sent around to foster homes, and you can quit your stupid job and we can do whatever we want. Okay?"
"You got it," Steve said, the words sitting heavy in his stomach. He knew he couldn't kill anyone, and Bucky knew it, too. Their Career games had never actually gone into the Arena for a reason. Once you saw your share of overdosers lying in pools of their own vomit, or stepped over your tenth mugging victim, death lost the sheen and glory it held for the Capitol.
"You're allowed a token, right?" Bucky said, and Steve nodded. They all knew the rules. "Well, it's stupid, but it's all I could do, and I had to steal some metal from the factory, but - here."
He held out his hand, and Steve took the pin from Bucky's palm, a crudely-fashioned circle, hastily hammered into shape, and painted - circles of red and white, with a white star on a blue background in the centre. "What's this?" Steve asked.
"It's your symbol," Bucky said, and his voice stopped trembling. He stuck out his chin. "For you. For the Captain. For people to remember you. They'll make merchandise, and people will buy it, and then you'll get sponsors, and then they'll help you and then you'll win. All right?"
"Of course." And he knew Bucky needed to be strong, to be a man, but Steve allowed himself one moment of weakness and tousled Bucky's hair. Bucky sniffled, but clenched his teeth. "You watch me," Steve said. "I'll fight for you. I promise."
"Just win, that's all I want," Bucky said, and then the door opened and the guards pulled him back.
The door shut again, leaving Steve alone and staring at the pin. He let out a breath, felt his chest squeeze, and attached his token to his shirt. He turned, and it glinted in the morning light, casting a light reflection on the wall opposite. Steve closed his eyes.
District Seven
Finally. Finally finally finally! Nobody ever told you how long twelve years could feel.
Jan practically skipped to the sign-in table, where she took the large pen - chained to the table, because people stole things, and the Capitol didn't like people who stole things - and signed her name in proper cursive, like Daddy taught her before he died, getting all the loops right: JANET VAN DYNE. She stood still and straight while they pricked her finger and pressed it to the paper, to verify she wasn't lying. Janet didn't lie.
She looked for the nearest camera and gave it her best smile, tilting her head and flipping her chin-length hair back out of her eyes. She had a sound bite prepared, how proud she was and how excited to be eligible at last, but the person at the table just said "Next" in a bored tone and she had to go. Jan winked at the camera as she passed it, and hoped that at least somebody in the Capitol saw.
It was so exciting, being part of it. Not that Janet actually wanted to go into the Games - even though she practiced with her tiny knives, small enough for her to conceal and throw and dip with poisons that she'd learned herself. That was all for fun. She just liked the excitement, like standing on a branch that was almost, almost, almost too thin to hold her and looking down down down at the ground. Feeling the wind rush through her hair and make knots in her stomach.
Jan played Arena sometimes, on her own, but in her Games all the other tributes were big and mean and tough, none of the tiny ones who cried for their mothers or the big ones with lots of little sisters to protect. In her Games, all the tributes were Careers, and if they didn't want to be there then they were mean, real mean, like maybe they used to steal puppies back home or hit little kids, and it didn't matter if Jan killed them. In her Games, she darted in and stung them with her daggers before dashing off. They would never know she'd been there.
She peered through the crowds for Hank, but he was somewhere in the boy's side. Hank had worked with Daddy at the lumber mill - he owned District Seven's biggest, and a bunch of the rest too, and so while Seven wasn't the richest one in the Capitol, Jan never had to worry - and next year, once he was too old to be Reaped, Daddy had said he could take over. It was in the papers and everything.
Hank was smart - too smart for Seven, Daddy always said in a sad kind of voice, he belonged somewhere like Three because he liked to make things. But he wasn't born in Three, and so in Seven he worked at making the machines faster, the paper stronger, and how to recycle all kinds of plants. He liked insects, too, and could name you any kind of ant in the world just by looking at a picture of one of its legs.
"I like ants," Hank said to Jan once, when she asked him why he spent so much time studying something so tiny. "Did you know, there are some ants that if even one bites you, it feels like you've been punched in the stomach? Some fire ants, if you get enough of them, they'll run right over you and you'll die, whether you're a mouse or a human or a horse."
"Wow!" Janet had breathed.
"See?" Hank had smiled at her, and his smile punched her in the gut, so maybe he was part ant, too. "There's a kind of wasp that looks like an ant, too, in District Ten. It's called the cow-killer. Can you guess why?"
"Wow!" Janet said again.
Hank knew so many things. She wanted to be smart like him, which gave her another reason to be excited she was old enough for Reaping. Anyone too young for the Reaping was a child, but Reaping-age children were practically adults. And Hank couldn't ignore her anymore if she was an adult. She'd told him she would marry him someday, and he'd just laughed at her and pushed his safety goggles up his nose and changed the subject. But Janet didn't mind. She knew.
Up on the big stage, Corona tossed a coin to see whether they'd call the boys or the girls first. Jan bounced on her heels. She knew the Games were scary, but the TV screens helped. It wasn't really people on those screens getting killed, Daddy had said, the first year she was old enough to understand and started to cry at the footage. They stopped being people as soon as someone called their names. Once they stepped up on that stage, they became Tributes instead, and that wasn't the same. Not the same at all.
"Heads! Looks like we start with the boys," said Corona, with a big belly laugh. He made that joke every year, and Jan never got it, but oh well. She stood on her toes, trying to see the stage itself, but she was too small. She looked at the big screen the Capitol brought in instead.
"Isn't this exciting?" Corona continued, talking to nobody since nobody ever said anything back. Jan really wanted to shout "yes" in answer, but was too afraid. Oh well. "All right, boys, drumroll!" He beat a pattern on his legs, then reached into the bowl and pulled out a slip of paper. "Henry Pym, you lucky boy, come up to the stage!"
No.
Janet gasped. She stared at the screen, watching as the camera swooped around to find him. Maybe there was another Henry Pym. Nobody called him Henry anyway; if anyone did, he just chuckled and said that Henry was his father, and please call him Hank. But then the camera round him, and Jan's heart started skipping rope, because there was his face, right there on the screen, the blond hair and the blue eyes and chiseled jaw. He looked good on the screen, like he was made for cameras even though he almost never stepped outside his workshop. Jan swelled with pride looking at him.
Except no, because the camera wasn't here to show everyone how handsome Hank was; they were going to show them how he was going to die.
Last year, the tribute had been Jeremy, from a few grades higher than Jan. When they were little she would chase him around the playground and threaten to kiss him while he shrieked and ran away. Still, once he stepped onstage, Janet remembered Daddy's advice, and even Jeremy stopped being a person to her.
She waited to see if it would happen with Hank, but the only thing that did was that her chest squeezed with every step he took toward that stage. Jan knew she couldn't let him. "I volunteer!" she shouted.
Everyone stopped. Corona cleared his throat. "Only boys can vote for the male tributes, little miss," he said, and chuckled, looking up at the camera. "Sorry about that."
Hank's eyes went wide when Jan shouted, and he tried to find her, but everyone was so, so tall. The cameras hadn't seen her yet, to put her face on the screen for him.
"Well, that's exciting, isn't it?" Corona said, offering Hank the microphone. "Do you have anything to say to your District or the Capitol, Henry?"
"It's Hank," he said, blinking, but then he got control of himself, and managed a smile. "My father's name is Henry."
"Well, well, my mistake. Welcome aboard, Hank!" Corona shook his hand and turned a big grin on the cameras. "Looks like we have quite the handsome tribute this year. And now, for the girls -"
"I volunteer!" Jan screamed again, and this time people moved out of their way, trying to find who had shouted. Most of them didn't look down far enough, and Jan got to see their eyebrows furrow and their foreheads wrinkle in confusion.
"Aren't you eager!" Corona exclaimed. "I haven't even picked the name of the girl yet!"
The cameras saw her, finally, and Jan quailed a little to see herself thirty feet high on the screen, but she clenched her jaw and raised her chin and tried to look brave and strong. She was pretty, Daddy always said, and would grow up to be stunning, so there. "I don't care," Jan said. "I volunteer."
"I suppose, if you want it so badly, you may as well," Corona said. "All right, then, come on up!"
"No!" Hank burst out. "No, she's just - she's just a little girl! She's my boss's daughter, she doesn't understand what she's doing. Please, you can't - don't let her."
"Oh, but look, she wants to! Would you ruin all her fun?" Corona said, giving Hank a pout, and for a second Jan thought Hank was going to punch him right in his painted mouth.
Jan didn't care about having fun. She just knew that if Hank turned into a tribute instead of a person, she wanted to be there with him. She'd lost Daddy. She couldn't lose him. At least if they died, they would die together.
"You don't get it," Hank babbled, and he gripped Corona's sleeve. Corona made an alarmed face and tried to peel Hank's fingers off before he tore or mussed the fabric. "Look, two years ago, my girlfriend got Reaped. She never made it back. Last year, Mr. Van Dyne died in an accident at the lumber mill. Jan, she's - she's like my little sister. Please don't do this."
Corona cleared his throat, and Jan thought he might actually be uncomfortable. "It's a bit late for that, I think," he said, cheery. "Everyone, let's give a hand for this brave little girl, shall we?"
Janet climbed the stairs, though it took her a second because they were so high. She ran across the stage to Hank and clung to his arm. "What do you think you're doing?" he hissed, pausing at the end to toss the cameras a quick smile. "Are you crazy?"
"I love you," Jan proclaimed, throwing all the weight behind it that she could.
"Oh god, not that again, please!" Hank's eyes were wide and scared. It made her think of a time a bird had flown into the mill by mistake, and battered itself against the windows trying to get out. By the time someone caught it and released it, the panes were smeared with red. "Jan, no, you don't understand what you're doing."
"I'm helping you," she said. "I'm fast, and small. We can win."
"Don't you get it?" Hank burst out, but he kept his voice down. Corona was talking in the background about the glory of the Capitol, and nobody listened to them. "There is no we! Only one of us could win, and honestly, what's probably going to happen is that we're both going to die on day one! Your father would kill me if he were still alive."
"I don't care. I want to be with you." Jan's eyes prickled. "Anyway, you heard Corona. It's too late now."
Hank swore under his breath. He caught Jan's hand in his and squeezed her fingers, then raised both their hands together - Janet's straight up, his bent at the elbow. Somewhere, in the Capitol, Jan knew people cheered.
District Eleven
They told him he had five minutes.
"You can't come with me," Sam said. "You know you can't." He looked out the window instead of making eye contact, because it hurt too much. His wrist ached from the other's grip, but what else could he do? He swallowed. "I want you to have a good life. You hear me? Go, live, find a girl, have lots and lots of kids. Shit on Peacekeeper helmets." Sam's eyes flickered to the door in case they heard that, but the houses in Eleven were solid.
"You're gonna be fine. If I make it -" (he wasn't going to make it) "- I'll come back here, and I'll find you, and we'll go somewhere together, just you and me, find a house and get a farm and just, I dunno, be happy."
No answer, but Sam expected that. "Okay, buddy." He stood and opened the window. At least the Capitol could only take one of them. He had that comfort, and small though it might be, he'd use it to keep him warm at night. "Time to go."
He reached over and scritched his fingers in the soft feathers behind Redwing's head. The falcon let out a low keening noise, tilting his head to the side. Sam closed his eyes. "I'll come back for you," he said, and Redwing lifted his wings and flew out into the fields.
The Peacekeeper opened the door. "You still have some time," she said. "There's no one else?"
Sam shrugged. "My parents are dead," he said. "I had no one else. He was my best friend."
The Peacekeeper stared at him for a few seconds, impassive behind her helmet, then shook her head. "All right, then. Let's get you to the train."
District Twelve
Loki saw the Reaping at District Two as clearly as if he'd actually watched it. They would rig the drawing twice - once, of course, by choosing the Volunteers ahead of time, but in a rare move, Loki knew they would pre-select the initial tribute, too. Well - he didn't know, exactly, but they'd be a fool not to. Odin first made a name for himself by stepping in for a terrified first-year, and anyone with brains would wish to do the same with Thor. So they would select someone to draw parallels - someone young, or weak, or disabled. Perhaps all of the above, a tiny, armless twelve-year-old unable to walk. Whatever would make Thor look all the more heroic.
Well, let them have their hero. They'd all see soon enough, and oh, wouldn't Thor be surprised. Loki would give anything to see the look on Thor's face when he saw Twelve's Reaping - how lucky for him that they always filmed the Careers watching their competition, and Loki would access to that footage any time he liked.
Poor Twelve. Poor, soot-filled, ground-underfoot Twelve. Upon his return, Loki hadn't attempted to visit the strangers who birthed him, but instead moved into an empty house in the Victor's Village, an optimistic name for a run-down, abandoned neighbourhood if Loki ever heard one. It served his purposes well enough. The only other Victor in Twelve spent his days underneath a bottle of whatever he could get, and never noticed Loki's presence. Likely if he did, he'd only assume Loki was a ghost.
He only barely restrained himself from tapping his foot with impatience as they suffered through the Capitol film. He didn't need the reminder that someone else owned his very soul, that he only lived but for another's indulgence. Loki had that lesson ingrained in him nearly a decade ago. Those who didn't know already would never truly understand, making this nothing but a waste of time.
The female tribute, older than Loki but starvation-thin and skittish, would never last the bloodbath. Loki spent no more thoughts on her. After his years in the Career Centre it seemed sick, almost an abomination, to send these untested children into the same Arena. If the Capitol were truly interested in showcasing glory - and if they wanted to remind everyone that even the strongest must fall - they would have spent the effort to train Careers in every district. Ah well. Loki wished her a quick death; none of this was her fault, after all.
At long, long last, they called the name of the male tribute. A hush, then a series of anguished cries, too young and female to be his - Loki checked the screens and saw a tall, strong boy stride away from his four younger sisters. "No!" the girls cried, clinging to him. "No, you can't go!"
Loki watched the screen for parents, but saw no one. This boy raised his siblings on his own, then, the parents likely casualties of a mining accident, or perhaps a plague. Everyone around them averted their eyes or muttered to themselves about the unfairness of it all. He waited to see if anyone had the courage to do something, rather than talk or sag in relief that they'd been spared, but of course no one did. The boy continued walking; the littlest girl screamed herself hoarse while the oldest held her, silent tears streaking her cheeks.
Loki waited until the boy reached the stage, then stepped forward. "I volunteer," he said, putting the full weight of import behind his words. He felt the shock of everyone in the district hit him like a palpable thing, and he smiled. He crossed the square and stood on the first step, facing the boy, his sisters, the villagers. Everyone stared at him.
"I volunteer," Loki repeated. "Because it's clear to me that not one person in this district has the spine of a disabled kitten. You're all willing to feel the tragedy, but not a one of you will put your lives on the line. You're weak. Disgusting. But I volunteer, to show you that the boy you hate and revile is greater than all of you put together. On one condition." He paused, backed up one step. "You will kneel before me. All of you. Kneel and acknowledge me, and I will be your sacrifice."
"Like hell!" someone shouted, and a rallying murmur swept the crowds.
Loki was no fool, and he expected this. "Will you really send this boy to his death for the sake of your pride?" he demanded. "Will you condemn his little sisters to starvation and despair? I know none of you will take them in - you won't spare the food from your own precious babies' mouths. Instead they'll become nothing but a relic of tragedy, and you will walk past their bony carcasses and tell yourselves it is the Capitol's fault, that there was nothing you could do. You will all be cowards, and liars. I can stop that. And al you have to do is kneel." He waited, and this time, he shouted, his voice reverberating through the square: "KNEEL!"
The oldest of the little girls stepped forward and bent her knee. "Please," she said, and while her voice trembled, it did not crack. She tugged her sisters forward and down, their skirts brushing the dusty ground. "Please," she said again, and "Thank you."
Her brother, the boy Loki's life was about to save, twitched for a moment, but then he, too, dropped to his knees. The crowd rumbled, then, in a wave, found itself at half height. Power surged through Loki like a wave, and he forced back the laugh of triumph. He held out his arms, acknowledging their gesture, and bowed his head.
"Thank you," he said. "Of all the districts, Twelve, you are forgotten. You are hated. You are despised, when you are remembered at all. But I promise you this - from this moment on, no one will forget you ever again."
Loki ascended the stairs. He wondered if his birth parents knelt in the crowd, or if time had taken them away. He didn't bother to look, only taking the microphone from the startled Capitol lapdog. "My name," he said, looking straight into the camera, "is Loki Odinson. And I am here to watch you burn."
