Your name is Maria Hill, and eleven months ago, you won the 74th annual hunger games. Now, the carpeted floor of the victory train rumbles under your feet, and your mentor stares sternly down at you.
"Remember, miss Hill," he says, his single good eye fixated on your face, "no fear, no crying, no happiness. You don't shake, you don't stutter. You practice reading those cards out loud? The ones Mrs. Villiers gave you?"
"Yes, sir," you say, firmly, respectfully. It's the voice you've practiced in front of your mirror every day for the past eleven months. It's sturdy under your hands, now. It feels safe in your mouth.
"Read them for me," he says, "try not to look at them."
You do. He nods satisfactorily. "Good enough," he says, which is about as close to a compliment as he gets, "you'll probably get better at 'em once you've read 'em to the big crowds a couple times. You get nervous in front of people?"
"No, sir," you lie. You hate crowds.
"Bullshit," he says, then, "nothing wrong with being nervous, Hill, just so long as no one knows. Keep it here." He pats his chest through the thick leather trenchcoat he always wears. "You ready for District 12?"
"I'll find out when we get there," you say. It's as close to true as you can get. Your mentor smiles.
"Give 'em hell, kid. Statuesque-like."
You aren't ready for District 12. You're not ready for District 11, either. They blur together in your mind as equally terrible experiences, but when they happen, 12 is a little worse. You walk out onto the stage, head held high, hair tied tight behind your head, wearing something tight and black and expensive, and stare out into the crowd of dark-eyed, tight-lipped adults. There are huge revolving pictures on big television screens of the tributes, and your stomach clenches like a fist. You killed both of them. You remember them distinctly. Their families stare at you, crying, angry.
Your face holds firm, lips tight, eyes fierce, but your hands shake so badly you nearly drop the cards. Your chest is tight, and until you focus hard on calming your pulse, your breath comes too fast and too shallow, like you're drowning in one of the nightmares. You close your eyes, open them again, like you're expecting to see something less terrifying. Look down at the cards in your hands. You can't read them, but you remember what they say. Breathe deep - and read them.
You're barely done with the cards, lips trembling as you say "Panem today, Panem tomorrow, Panem forever," when the applause rises, resentful and slow, and Fury grabs you by the shoulder and pulls you back behind closed doors. You gasp at him, stare up desperately, but he is ironfaced, and makes no eye contact with you until he's trundled you back onto the train.
"Don't clock out here, Hill," he says, stern, "you've got cameras everywhere. The Capitol's got its eyes on you. Stay focused. Keep all this - " he points solidly at your brimming tears - "under wraps." You sniff, hard, and he sets a heavy palm on your shoulder. "Easy, Hill," he adds, softer, "it doesn't get harder. Twelve's the worst."
Districts 11 and 12 are definitely the hardest, but 9 and 10 aren't much easier. You wake up screaming the night after District 9 - it was down to you and the tribute from there in the games, and you remember throttling her to death, her knife in your guts. Five minutes after, Fury comes sweeping in from the other side of the train. He gives you his coat to bundle up in when you tell him how awful blankets are. It smothers the dreams.
By the time you get to District 7, you've perfected a stony, solid face - or, more accurately, you've perfected internalizing the face you used to practice in front of the mirror every day. You keep the cards in your back pocket, shoulders back, head high, hands at your sides. You learn how to look imposing as you spit out the lies Mrs. Villiers wrote for you - about the courage showed by the tributes from the district, about the strength of the Capitol, about the unity of Panem today, tomorrow, forever - and the people of the district fear you, the way they fear Fury.
You remember the tributes from every District, the little girl and the skinny, spotty boy from seven, that terrifying murderous bitch from nine, the tall, strong, handsome boy from eleven that you had an embarrassing crush on, the dirty-faced blond kids from twelve - Jesus, you remember all of them. Fury's coat helps a little, but he needs it, too, and when he needs it you are plagued with dead hands reaching out to strangle you, the wailing screams cut short when you ripped a girl's throat out, grabbing, pulling, desperate hands drowning you in the lake from the stadium
And you wake up, screaming, sweating, flailing away from imagined hands grasping at you, and sometimes you can't stop screaming, can't wake up even when you're awake. You cannot get away until you hear the charging footsteps of Fury hurtling down the train to rescue you, his existence reminding you what is real and what is not. The night terrors were never as bad at home, but there was never anyone at home willing to help you. Fury is always present - he's not always helpful, but he's always present.
The careers are the easiest - you know, at least, that all the kids from 1 and 2 actually volunteered, that they were barely kids at all, that they went in for glory, and it's easy to feel contempt for them. They are not like the starving children of 11 and 12, their citizens not hollow-eyed and bony-faced like pale imitations of humans. They stare up proudly, and you stare proudly out back, recite the cards from memory.
Panem today.
Panem tomorrow.
Panem forever.
The Capitol is insufferable, and you have to spend an entire day there.
Well, actually, no. You spend most of your day with your escort and her tiny herd of costume minions being dressed and fitted and made up. Your dress is tightened and loosened and hemmed, your hair jerked this way and that, your face generally trussed up in some imitation of Capitol fashion. You feel ugly, like an overdressed bird of paradise, but your escort cries "happy tears" when she sees you, and Nick nods proudly, stoic, unsmiling. "How you feeling, Hill?"
"Like hell," you say flatly. You are too tired to lie.
He smiles and nods. "Go give it back to them," he tells you, and sets a hand on your shoulder.
Your dress is some prickly thing, a flaring Capitol party red, tight on your hips and loose below the knees. It gives you the sensation of tottering back and forth, unable to really shift your thighs to compensate for your actual footfalls. The heels don't help. You've never worn high heels before in your life - if your escort wasn't literally holding your hand the entire way in, you'd probably have hurtled down the stairs and died on the Capitol steps. Wouldn't that be perfect. President Snow could clean blood off of his front porch for once.
They're stifling. Stifling. Everyone in the Capitol wants to see you, stroke your dress, make conversation about what a -hero- you are. Women with smiles like jigsaw nightmares pull you between them so they can get a picture with you. A man with his eyebrows nearly in his hairline offers to teach you to dance, doesn't wait for you to respond until he pulls you onto the floor. You resist the overwhelming temptation to slap him across the face, but it's a near thing. Personally, you're impressed with your own moral fortitude that you last as long as you do - but eventually you claim you're running to The Ladies (which you guess is what they call the toilets, up here) and slip away as fast as you can into a series of mostly unoccupied rooms.
The palace is generally packed, but some areas are more packed or less packed than other areas. The courtyard, for example, was impossible to navigate, but the library only has three or four couples smooching in the corners, completely oblivious to you - and the room that leads off of it, marked with a golden plaque (which, given that this is the president, is probably real gold) labeled "HALL OF VICTORY", is completely empty. The door isn't locked, or anything - it's just hard to find, or maybe boring. Good. You jostle the handle a little and slide in.
It's not a hallway, which is what you expected from the name, just a room. It's pretty big, to be fair, but it's not exactly long. Three of the four walls are covered in illuminated rectangles about the size of movie posters, glowing gently at your entrance, but there's no other lighting in the room, giving you the eerie feeling of being completely alone. It's the first time you've felt really alone in almost a year - no cameras, no Capitol citizens, no Fury, no Villiers, nobody. A huge weight lifts itself from your body, your shoulders relaxing, chin lowering, and, newly liberated as you are, you walk to the wall on your right to look at the nearest rectangle.
It's a picture of you.
You startle back for a second, stumbling on wobbling heels for a moment, then inspect the picture again. Specifically, it's a picture of you from almost one full year ago, fifteen and ponytailed and seriously photoshopped. Your Capitol portrait, you remember, from the games last year. Shoulders upwards, staring nobly into the distance. Fury insisted. Underneath it, on a silver plaque, reads:
74TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES
MARIA HILL, DISTRICT 5
You blink, almost nervously, wobble a little more - step out of your shoes. No one's watching - and walk two steps to the left. The picture is of a face you vaguely remember, a boy with shark cheekbones and gelled back hair. You look at the plaque.
73RD ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES
LOKI ODINSON, DISTRICT 10
It clicks. Of course, you realize. Hall of victory. Past victors of the games. You turn around, survey the room, and something in your stomach drops. You didn't realize what a big number 74 was until you saw it all together at once. If you multiplied the number of pictures in the room by 23, you'd have the number of people who've died in the stadium. You feel sick.
Something, though, keeps you walking. At the next reaping, you figure with a shudder, you'll be a mentor - and Fury says you're going to have to get to know all the other mentors, too. Make friends in the Capitol. It'd be good to have names and faces under your belt, and you learn fast. Besides, even this beats being out "among the people". You take mental notes, especially with the prettiest victors. 71ST ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES - SAMUEL WILSON, DISTRICT 11. 70TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES - THOR ODINSON, DISTRICT 2. Wait. Odinson again? You look back to the plaque with the hair gel boy. Both Odinson, from different districts. Your brow furrows. You make a mental note.
You also make a note of the big blank space of wall in between 61 and 62, or PHIL COULSON, DISTRICT 8 and DARCY LEWIS, DISTRICT 9. It's too big for a regular picture to fit, but you aren't sure what else would go in there. A door, maybe? Why? You bite your lip and ponder studiously as you walk further along the wall, looking for faces or names you recognize.
Something weird strikes you as you inspect the plaque for PEGGY CARTER, DISTRICT 12. First off, that's the first District 12 victor you've seen so far, and you're close to the far side of the wall, but secondly and more strikingly, below her name and district is a third line. "KILLS: 7". It's not on the plaque to the right, closer to the present - but it is on the one to the left, further in the past. Maybe that's something that used to be lauded, mentioned, important. Like a score. The girl in the picture looks younger than you, maybe thirteen or fourteen, all big round eyes and softly curled hair. You can't imagine her killing anyone, let alone seven people. Maybe that's how she survived.
At the corner, the numbers skip from 51 to 49, but you don't really notice. You're focused on the kills counter, now, figuring out just how deadly these victors really are. You also notice that some of them have another, smaller silver plaque below the first one: "DECEASED". Guess you don't have to know those names, you think dryly, and skip over any and all with it. You've stopped feeling lonely in the room. You are surrounded by other victors, who are all staring proudly or prettily or humbly to one side of the frame or the other. The pictures have lowered in quality somewhat - the one of you was a holographic image, moving slightly as the viewer did, but these ones are just pictures.
You find the big gap between 41 and 42 on this wall, only it's not a gap - you actually have to stand back to look at it. It's another picture, almost twice the size of the other ones, framed in gold, with a plaque both at the top of the frame and the bottom. At the top, and then at the bottom, you read:
SECOND QUARTER QUELL
50TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES
TONY STARK, DISTRICT 1
KILLS: 4
The boy in the picture doesn't look like Tony Stark. You've seen Tony Stark a million times, on TV, in Capitol propaganda, everywhere he could get his face. Tony Stark's got salt and pepper temples, and an almost shaved face, and a jawline that you could break a door down with, not...well. The boy in the picture has a militarily close haircut, and a clean-shaven face, and an expression that's probably supposed to look careless and proud but mostly just looks dorky. The boy is...a boy. He looks like he breaks out sometimes, or stammers when people are looking at him.
You glide past most of the rest of the wall, go to the third and final one. It's been a while, now, you should be getting back, but you have to know. Most of the plaques have the "DECEASED" label below them over here. You aren't sure exactly how old Fury is, but you want to know why the Capitol is so afraid of him. It takes longer to find than you expected. He doesn't look like Fury at all. He's young, and...kinda handsome, in a retro sort of way. Close-cropped hair, a tidy goatee. And, most significantly, both of his eyes stare out, proud, wordless, no eyepatch, no scars, nothing.
38TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES
NICHOLAS FURY, DISTRICT 5
KILLS: 21
It's the most kills of anyone in the room, you realize. The next highest was an 11 count. You press a palm to your forehead, breathe hard. The hands that grip you by the shoulders when you wake at night are soaked in blood. He's your mentor. He gave you a cigarette case for your birthday. You feel like you're going to vomit.
Instead, you nearly have a heart attack as the door you forgot the existence of slams open. You scream involuntarily - it's one of those short, little screams, like a yapping dog - and Mrs. Villiers screams too. Both of you gasp and collect yourself. "Maria!" She says, sternly. "Whatever are you doing in here?"
"I was just...looking at the - " you wave around at the walls, and when she follows your direction, she sees the shoes you abandoned on the floor.
"What are those doing there? Those are Garvedericci shoes, darling!" She looks so impudent, dark hair springing everywhere in curls, you almost want to laugh. "Get those on and let's go! The president is about to make an announcement, but he's been keeping it on hold because everyone says you're missing. The entire palace has been looking for you!"
You cast your eyes down, apologize, and cross the room to step into your shoes. When you turn around, you glance around the room one last time, and your eyes fall on the golden frame on the far left wall. You blink. It's not a photograph at all. It's a watercolor painting. A broad-shouldered, blond haired, strong, attractive young man. He doesn't look like a kid - he looks like he's in his mid-twenties at least, fully grown and beautiful.
FIRST QUARTER QUELL
25TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES
STEVE ROGERS, DISTRICT 12
KILLS: 0
Zero kills.
"Come on, Maria dear," your escort calls from the doorway, "are you having more trouble with the heels? Oh, dear, I told you that you should practice at those, they are so very high," she clicks her tongue pityingly. "Come here, darling, you give me your arm and I'll help you make your way out."
On the ride home, you strip yourself of the dress and wrap a blanket around your mostly naked body. You lie on one of the couches in the main room - Fury sits on the couch across from you, reading the paper. There's an amiable silence for at least an hour and half.
Finally, half asleep, you address him. "Sir," you mumble drowsily, "who's Steve Rogers?"
His one good eye flicks from the paper to you. "Steve Rogers?" He asks. You nod from your blanket cocoon. He sighs heavily, thoughtfully, folds up the paper on his lap. "Steve Rogers was the victor of the first quarter quell," he says, almost wearily, "first ever victor from the 12th District. Holds a fairly justified hatred for his home. Complete hermit. No one except Carter and the District 12 tributes see him much."
You try to think, but it's hard when you're bundled up like the filling of a delicious blanket burrito and the atmosphere is saturated with the soporific noise of the train on the tracks. "He doesn't have a Capitol portrait," you say, finally. "It's not a picture, I mean. It's a painting."
"He says it's against his religion to be photographed or seen on camera," Fury says, and unfolds the newspaper again.
"Is that a real religion?"
"Hell if I know."
You think hard again, eyes closed. "What does he look like now?"
"Old." Fury doesn't even look up. "Don't you worry about Steve Rogers, Hill. Just focus on your mission right now. You gonna go back to your room to sleep or what?"
You shake your head, eyes still fastened shut. "Nnn, 'm gonna stay here," you assert.
There's a long pause. Then, Fury says "me, too," and the light behind your eyelids lowers. You crack one eye open to see him reading with the desk light from behind him, the rest of the room dark.
"G'night."
"Night, Hill."
The weary sound of the train trundles on around you. You do not dream.
DISCLAIMER: the Hall of Victory is absolutely fanon. It was invented for this AU to help with conveying backstory. If it inspires you in some way, or you think it's a cool idea and want to borrow it, go ahead! I'm all about that.