AN #1: A little late. Sorry, guys. I've had this chapter written out for several days, and got halfway through the typing and editing phase yesterday when Word spontaneously crash. *heavy sighs for days* But here it is! :D
Also, I'm taking a lot of liberties with the getting-to-the-arena process. You'll probably recognize them, so I hope you won't mind.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games, nor do I make any profit from my work here.
-/-/-/-
Gale and I are separated immediately.
Peacekeepers muscle us through heavy wooden doors as the Anthem starts, the deafening roar of the speakers drowning out our mother's cries.
I understand, now, why they are played so loudly on Reaping Day.
We enter the town hall, Madge's home, and step into the foyer, the warm colors sending a small trickle of calm, familiarity, seeping into my heart. The reds and browns blend effortlessly into golds and yellows, blurring the walls with tapestries and paintings, the flooring with shining oak and woven carpets.
I lock eyes with President Snow's, and any calm I have retained melts into hatred, anger.
This painting of him – required in every town hall – is old. Everything is aged and breaking in District 12, and here, with our president's yellow hair and pale, pink snake lips, it is even more prominent. Now, his hair is long and unkempt, falls in a wiry white tangle. His eyes are clouded, his mouth stained bloodred, from what we can only hope and pray is an illness that even the Capitol cannot heal.
This president staring back at me has unfocused eyes, as if the artist could not bear to look into the man's gaze.
And I know it's silly to think that he's looking at me, but in that few seconds of contact with the oil and canvas, I see hatred. Hatred for us, his children, the children he is murdering.
I'm taken down a hallway to the right, while Gale is taken to the left. The Peacekeepers' faces are unknown to me; they were bulletproof helmets with tinted visors.
The room they take me to is small; no larger than the piano room that I know is just down the hall. There is a chair, and a lamp. No windows. The air vents are on the ceiling, pumping in a steady stream of cool air.
I wait here, in this unsettlingly small space, for several minutes before a girl enters, a slight limp to her gait, scarlet plaits hanging off of her head and covering her right side. She holds a glass of water and when she holds it out to me, her fist opens to reveal a small, yellow pill, the size of a pea.
She looks up at me when I don't take it, her hair falling from her cheek to reveal a milky white eye. There is scarring over that side of her face, burns, from what I can tell. Her hair seems to be undamaged, and yet her leg also seems to be crippled.
"Take it," she commands, her voice strong and sure. I shake my head at her, refuse to take this strange medicine that she is offering me.
"It will make things…easier," she whispers, her voice losing its steel. I shake my head again, but this time I can feel my hesitation. Make things easier? Will it make me forget what's happening? Not think about it any longer?
Forget Rory? Forget I must kill my best friend to save myself? My family? To keep his alive, as well?
She cocks her head at me, brow furrowing. Her right eyebrow is rippled above that blind eye.
"The boy took it," she edges, still looking at me with confusion.
"No." I answer. She's lying, but it doesn't matter, because I won't take it. I won't forget.
She stares at me for another couple of seconds, then nods. Her eyes hold pity, and I know it is because I will die and she will not. She has lived with her disability, has likely been ridiculed and abused for it her entire life, but because of the handicap it poses on her, she has been formally relieved from any duty to her nation.
Including the Games.
She watches me longer than she should, and I wonder if she's thinking about how long I'll last. How last year, it was two town children that had been drawn, a fourteen and seventeen year old, and how they had not survived past the initial Cornucopia bloodbath.
How, maybe, with two Seam children, Gale and I, who have fought for our lives from the days our fathers were killed, District 12 might finally have a victor.
She blinks, swallows the pill herself. She hands me the glass of water, casts a strange glance at the lamp, then turns and leaves.
It is close to a half hour before that door opens again, and when it does, my mother is ushered inside, the door shut behind her.
We have five minutes.
She grabs me, holds me tighter than she did the night my father didn't come home. Holds me so my face rests in her hair, and hers in mine. She's shaking, sobbing, and a part of is glad that I will never live to see my daughter leave for her death.
Her eyes are leaving my hair damp, her nose running so that I can barely hear what she is saying.
"You can't go away again, Mom," I mutter, trying so hard not to cry, knowing that Rory is coming next and that I must be strong for him. She nods against my shoulder furiously, sucking in her breaths painfully as she breathes through my hair.
"And you can't put Rory on the tesserae," I add, and this time my voice is hard. Strong. Because I had my name in that bowl over twenty times this year because we needed grain and oil. And he only had his name in once.
Gale's was in forty eight times this year. She can't let that happen to him.
My throat is getting tighter as she mumbles affirmatives to me, and I'm trying so hard, trying to think of anything she needs to know about my brother that I won't be able to tell her.
But then I realize that Rory may have the rest of his life with our mother, and I will not. I only have these few seconds left. These few minutes.
So I hold my tongue and clutch her to me tight, try to memorize the smell of her shampoo – fresh grass and lemon – and try to remember the feel of her hair against my cheek, the way her hands feel pressed against my linen dress.
I don't have much time left. And I don't want to be crying for however much I do.
The Peacekeepers are back so soon, and they're taking her away as she fights them, screams at them. "Don't touch me! I have legs, I can walk!"
A sob escapes from my throat as we exchange fleeting I-love-you's, but I tamp it down, shove it down, because Rory is next, his black hair frizzy and unkempt, his eyes tear stained.
He seems to be handling this much better than our mother, so I smile as I hug him. His mouth quirks as he fidgets with Madge's gift, and as I look at the tarnished metal, I wonder if Madge knew this was going to happen. If that had been what she'd been trying to tell me.
I dismiss the thought as Rory unpins it. He holds it out me, eyes wide and unblinking.
I take it quietly, hold it in my fist instead of pinning it on my dress.
"You have to win," he breathes. He's looking at me with such faith, that faith that he's always had in me, like he knows I'll always be there.
"I'll try," I answer.
He nods, then, smooths down his front.
"If it comes down to it… And it's just the two of you… I'll understand. If you can't come back. If Gale does instead."
His voice cracks then, and I draw him in closer, breathe in this boy that is so much better than I ever was, will grow up to be the best of all of us. I'm sure of it.
He sniffles a little, clutches my dress in his small hands.
"If things get bad," I start, my voice a soft whisper, "you'll have to go out and set traps. Never go on Reaping Day, though. Sometimes the fences get turned on."
He nods into my chest, and I swallow, try not to think of my family and Gale's without either one of us. How will they eat? Survive?
He's crying, so softly, trying so hard to be tough, to take it. I clutch him and rock him like he is still my little baby doll, breathe him in deep and let it sober me, let the diluted scent of my father's cologne keep me strong, back me, pour iron into my spine.
We hold each other, and I pat his head and tell him I love him as he sobs. Keeping my tears to myself us the hardest thing I've ever done, it seems.
It feels like only seconds have passed, and then he's gone, whisked away, and I am alone, eyes burning and nose tickling.
My last visitor is Madge.
There's a second of disappointment at seeing her there, a second where I forget and wonder, Why didn't Gale come? Why wouldn't he come to say good-bye?
But then I remember, all over again, and I have to sit so that I don't black out, my vision swirling with unshed tears.
The doors close behind her, and she steps forward, swallows hard, looks at her shoes. She doesn't touch me, and I know it's because she can feel the hatred I'm trying to depress. My anger at her, at the world, for giving this girl who has had no suffering in her life, a full belly every night, life. And for giving Gale and I death, when all we have ever done was try to keep our families alive.
She steps to the lamp beside me, and switches it off with deft fingers that are used to this luxury. Her hand slides along the inside of the lampshade, and when her hand returns, she holds a small, golden bauble, taps a small red switch on the side.
She sets it back in the lamp, then, and flicks the light back on.
She looks at me, points to the lamp.
"Everywhere you go, you will find things like these. They're used for spying, and record what you say. Some even have cameras."
I look to the lamp and wonder if I have said anything that could be used against me, or Rory, or Gale.
I told him to hunt.
My whole body trembles.
"Can you delete it? Clear it out?" I stammer, hysteria starting in my bones as I clench my fist around the mockingjay pin.
She nods. "I already have. I reset it, so in six minutes or so it will turn back on. We'll both be gone by then."
I sigh deep, rest my head on my hand and lean forward in the chair.
"They'll try and make an example of you, Katniss," she breathes.
I watch her in confusion. Of course they are. That's the whole point of our tradition.
But she shakes her head at me again.
"No. You don't understand.'
She breathes deep, folds her hands.
"I can't tell you much," she whispers, her eyes pleading with me, "because I don't have the time."
"But I will tell you what I know."
She takes another deep breath.
"Prim and Rory? Their names were the only names in the Reaping Bowls."
My heart skips.
My breath hitches.
My vision swims.
Madge reaches forward, places a soft, un-callused palm on my knee. She ignores me as I flinch at the contact, instead tightening her grip.
"You or Gale," she starts, her words fierce and true, "are the reason why that happened. Either you two, or possibly your mothers, have shown rebellious tendencies."
Of course we have. We hunt ever day of our lives, sell our game to the mayor and to Peacekeepers. We rig our television sets to the main power line instead of our generators so that, when the power dies out in the Seam, the Games cannot air.
We blaspheme and we curse and we blame.
Madge's hand tightens.
"They are going to try and crush you."
My hands shake as I reach for my hair my fist clenching around her pin again.
She sees it, and her eyes soften. She places her pale hand over mine and smiles gently.
"It protected Rory," she starts softly "So…maybe it will protect you, too."
The guards come after that, to take both of us.
I am escorted into the hallway and am led away to what I can only guess is a back exit. The roaring of the trains is echoing in the walls, and my heart pounds and my mind races.
This is it. It is –truly – over.
I will never see my home again.
At least I taught Rory to trap.
They won't starve. They won't starve.
Rory might have to go work in the mines, but the labor will take his mind off his grief. Prim will continue her apprenticeship with my mother, will become a midwife, perhaps a doctor.
They will survive.
I exit the building, and find myself on a back porch with three, small steps to the gravel below, to the train tracks that that silver monster with yellow eyes is speeding down.
I'm terrified, but I refuse to show it. I stand tall, back straight, and I pin the mockingjay right above my heart.
Gale steps out beside me, but takes a step back at the deafening cacophony that is barreling towards us.
His eyes are pink, his face gray with unshed tears.
We are strong.
We are one.
The train closes in, screeches to a stop.
The doors open as Haymitch Abernathy swings through the doorway from the town hall, amber bottle splashing, and curses at us to move so that he can enter.
Effie fusses at him in her Capitol accent as she ushers us inside, her wide grin revealing teeth the color of a lamb's nose, the lightest blush of pink.
We are strong.
We are one.
We step inside, hand in hand.
The door hisses shut.
"Coffee, anyone?"
-/-/-/-
AN #2: Phew! Glad that's over. Now we get to start having some fun… ;) Reviews are so appreciated! Thank you for reading!