a/n: This is ah, AU. I started wondering about what would happen if Foxface had won and then Gale just, appeared. Welp, enjoy! (And Volpes is pronounced Volps... it looks nicer with the e.)
we dream so long
prompt fifty-four: lock and key
"Forget"
(or how they're not that different, really)
The seventy-fourth Hunger Games ended with her one and only kill. She hadn't exactly been in on the action during the other twenty-two deaths but she's decided that this, by far, must be the worst to ever grace the Capitol's screens.
The blond boy from District Twelve is encouraging her, holding his hands up and sliding his (former) partner's blunt knife toward her. His hastily bandaged leg has broken open again, from neglect and without the aid of the medicine his partner, the fire girl, went to the feast for and never returned with- never returned at all. She decides then and there that the wounded boy before her must have really loved that girl- the pain is present in his eyes.
"Please-" he croaks out. She grasps the knife with all the courage she can muster- she's not confrontational and this is obscenely difficult. He points vaguely to the area around his heart, leaning back against the cavern wall, closing his eyes peacefully. She aims and brings down the knife with all the force she can gather, wanting to provide him with the quickest death she can think of.
She closes her eyes as well, as the knife impacts the body and the boy who was so in love convulses forward slightly, before sagging against the wall.
His cannon fires, they announce her victor.
All she can see is the blood that coats her hand.
...
It's unfortunate that the Victory Tour has to start with District Twelve. The place is small, smaller than her own District and everyone in the crowd glares at her as she begins her Capitol authorized speech. The boy's family sits to the left of the stage. His father's eyes are rimmed red and his brothers' are glassy. The mother alone is dry eyed.
On the right is the girl's family- Mother and younger sister, both pale and blond and nothing like the fighter from the arena. A tall, dark haired boy stands clutching the young girl's shoulders, with who she can only assume are his own siblings clustered around him.
She recognizes him with a jolt, as one of District Twelve's two living victors, the victor of the seventy-third Games who'd won his games by systematically hunting down his remaining opponents when he reached the final eight. She also remembers him from the highlights and interviews of her own Games, only six months prior. They called him the girl's cousin- how tragic it was for the family.
But when she glances at him, his eyes say nothing of "cousin". They scream at her, a dozen vile names that do nothing to show the magnitude of his anger. The blond boy may have been her only kill but she came home when the girl on fire didn't-
and it would appear Katniss was far more star-crossed than the Capitol thought.
...
The first Games she mentors for is the Third Quarter Quell. She watches as the two tributes from her District die in the bloodbath, the girl trying to protect her younger brother with every ounce of her being.
She fails.
The Quell is matching District against District and family against family; she silently is thankful for being the youngest child as she watches the old Mentor from District Four, Mags, flounder as her grandchildren fight for their lives in the Arena. And she's not the only Victor who has something to lose-
Secured somewhat safely on the rocky precipice overlooking the Cornucopia, are a little blond girl and her equally dark haired cousin. The golden Mockingjay pin that she recognizes as her former competitor's token glistens on her sister's shirt. The only familial resemblance Primrose Everdeen has to her cousin are her gray eyes, warily locked on the bloody scene below.
Her eldest cousin has the same ones and they're watching the screen before the assembled group of Mentors with a fire in them, hidden behind a stony face. He leaves the room when Finnick Odair comforts old Mags, who garbles unintelligibly- an eerie sound emitting from her throat- as her once vivacious granddaughter falls still under the hands of the District Two girl.
Careers, successful at the Cornucopia, began stalking their way up the mountain toward little Primrose and the dark haired boy, Rory. The latter were unarmed save for a small knife more suited to paring than anything else and square foot of thick blue plastic. Momentarily safe in their ignorance, Rory gathers Primrose in his arms muttering words into her hair that are too soft for the microphones to pick up.
That's when her suspicions surface and it hits her: the District Twelve tributes are no more cousins to each other than she is to them. And they're most certainly not there by the whim of fate.
Growing more anxious with each passing moment, she slips out the door under the view of Finnick Odair. He catches her eye for only a moment but long enough for him to give a barely perceivable nod.
...
"Get out! I don't need anything!" Gale Hawthorne shouts at the red head entering the otherwise empty lounge. She bristles at being referred to as an Avox; she's rich now, she's free- she won't serve anyone.
"I'm not a servant, mute or otherwise," she tells him scornfully. She's approaching him now from the side: not the front in case she be mistaken as aggressive and never from behind- if you value your face you never approach a Victor from behind.
"Request still stands, Volpes," he says tersely, adjusting his words to something resembling respect.
"And what if I want to stay here and drink myself into oblivion?"
"You're too young."
This coaxes an acidic laugh from her as she takes the bottle from him anyway, taking a large swig and near reveling in the way it burns down her throat. It makes her bold: "You're not the only one who's been victimized by the Games, y'know."
He shoots her a dirty look, reclaiming his bottle and his brooding look; "Yeah, poor you and your one kill. A cushy talent and life-"
"What the fuck are you going on about? I good as killed those twenty-three other kids by surviving, I've already killed two tonight! You have the same damn life, no amount of self-pity is going to change it!" she shouts at him, slamming the glass against the white marble table. He nearly blurts something out but holds back- his brother is already in the Arena; he doesn't need any more odds against him because of Gale's loose tongue.
He retorts to his increasingly acerbic self; "Well since you've got it all figured out, I'll excuse myself to watch my brother die in peace."
The resignation in his voice startles her: "He could win, you know."
"My brother is going to die." He says slowly and deliberately. Pain flickers briefly across his features and then, he's gone.
...
District Twelve manages to reach the final eight for the second year in a row. The Capitol reporters flock to the tributes' homes for interviews.
"My brother is not Primrose Everdeen's cousin. Just as I never was Katniss Everdeen's." The crowds go wild, wanting an encore of their star-crossed lovers from the mining District.
The change is announced the following day.
...
She sits on the edge of the velvet chair, next to Seeder from District Eleven. She anticipates the very horns she heard in her own victory, the booming voice of Claudius Templesmith-
but when the famed announcer does speak it's only to revoke earlier amendments and Volpes wonders if the same thing would have happened if Katniss and the blond boy had made it all the way the year before. Probably.
Seeder sighs, completely unsurprised.
...
Gale Hawthorne is standing on the edge of the roof when she places a small freckled hand on his shoulder. For the first time since his victory two years prior, he breaks down. He sags against the colorful wall of the rooftop, where the lights of the Capitol just reach making a white light sea across buildings, swaying with the beat of faint music from various clubs creating their own cacophony.
She wonders what she's supposed to say in this situation: Sorry your brother killed himself? Sorry you were right about him? Sorry you won your Games and Katniss died and her sister won the following year?
Volpes kneels down beside him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and clasping her hands together, resting them on his chest and her chin on his shoulder. For a moment, he moves to pull away but reconsiders and sinks back down. She begins to murmur meaningless consolations in his ear, rocking back and forth. It's the idea that counts anyway.
She stays with him until morning, waking him from nightmares as the night drags on. When the sun breaks over the Capitol, she covers him with her jacket- which is too small and shocking red- before treading softly back down the stairs and leaving the building quickly.
...
He shows up her doorstep- in the Capitol, that is- exactly a year later, during the height of the seventy-sixth Games.
"Can I-?"
He cuts her off, kissing her earnestly. She pushes him away and he flinches so violently she feels momentarily guilty. "Gale, what are you doing?" she asks. His eyes are dilated and his breathing is too quick; small traces of whatever he's drugged up on stain his fingertips. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and drops his head, taking a step closer.
"I, I want to forget it, Volpes!"
There is alcohol on his breath and her first thought is So this is what the Great Gale Hawthorne has been reduced to. But then she considers herself, and her tributes: one dead in the first five minutes, the other without a shred of dignity or humanity left in him at this point.
It's not honorable or responsible or any other synonyms ending in -ble. But it's the life she won and she doesn't want to recall it either. So she pulls him into the apartment and downs the bottle in the back of the cabinet (In case of emergency, Haymitch had insisted).
They mute the television and cover it with their clothing and forget it all.
a/n: Longer than intended. Oops.
