So, the penultimate reaping chapter and then we move on to the really interesting stuff.


Legacy Harvester, "Mesmer", 15, District 11

The burial field was a dull treeless expanse of naked earth salted into barrenness. In the center, the crude communal pit faced the sun like a gaping wound. Flies swarmed the putrefied corpses, their buzzing a never-ending hum. Every fortnight, the dead were burned, and all in town could enjoy the whiff of burned flesh.

And so it seemed out of place, rebellious almost, to see color dancing in the field.

Nine shiny baubles flew through the air, capturing the sun, casting moving rainbows on a ground where nothing grew.

They chased each other, a hypnotic blur, under the silent gaze of the small crowd of mourners.

Today a little boy was dead. A little boy much loved, from the look of things. A boy with a mother who could afford him a farewell in color.

'He had dreams. I want that remembered.'

Mesmer kept his face impassive as he juggled. Nobody was looking at him, but he wasn't crass. Inwardly, his lips curled in a sneer. All those people, grave faced for this little boy... All these people who watched entranced the baubles he'd painstakingly assembled from broken glass and resin. These people so desperate for anything to take them somewhere else, somewhere far away with color and hope. All those people who'd spat at Mesmer when he'd been the dead boy's age.

Mesmer's hand broke rhythm, the first bauble fell. He accompanied the fall of the second, smashing it against the unbroken first. The shatter of glass against glass broke the silence, as the mother had asked.

Shattered dreams.

Cora, the mother, let out a wretched groan. Her dark weathered hands were veiled with white flour: bread didn't stop being baked because a boy was dead. Her groan became song, and so began the funeral chant. A call to a god now confined to fields that stank of rot.

Perhaps, Mesmer allowed, grandmothers whispered of God to grand-daughters behind the safety of locked doors, perhaps fathers spoke words of old wisdom before heading off to the fields. Mesmer wouldn't know.

The song filled him, carrying him despite himself. Words, just words, and yet-.

The snag of emotion only made him gather the shards of his bauble faster. His part was done. Nobody would miss him. The thick stench of death was making his eyes water.

The field was surrounded barbed wire, broken at the single entry point.

The guards were eating bread. His bread.

Mesmer's fist clenched, cold sweat pearling on his brow. He took a slow breath. The terror stuck to him like a shadow. He hated it. It reminded him that even if he had little to fear now, he'd been powerless before.

Guards came in threes. They were Eleven-born, boys grown unusually tough or mean, taken from the fields and given a black uniform. They got full bellies and houses for their mothers, and in exchange gave the Capitol muscled order.

Peacekeepers in their whites didn't bother to man a stinky graveyard.

Before, Mesmer would have fled, never mind the bread Cora owed him. He had no place to nurse bruises and broken bones. Today, Mesmer let a small smile flit on his face. It was beautiful face, half his livelihood. His skin was as dark as they came, but without having ever met his parents, he knew he came from mixed stock: his eyes green, a disquieting green so vibrant they seemed to glow. That had been his first name: Green. That and freak. He'd been scrawny, still was. Kids were always happy to find someone more unfortunate to spit on. It was the only power they were allowed. It didn't help that his hair had fallen out in patches when he'd turned eight (or so; he wasn't all too sure of his age), until he'd gone entirely bald.

Mesmer's fingers slid into his pocket –his wide trousers were half pockets- and curled around the cool hilt of a knife. He'd survived on luck and others' pity, once, but now he had his ribbons, fire-powder, and knives. Better, he had a name, magician, and names he could call upon.

"That's my bread you're eating," he said calmly.

The smallest of the guards had a head on him. Their arms were as thick as his thighs.

"We watched it for you, freak. That deserves some payment, eh? Come to think of it, we're still hungry. Stringy thing like you don't need six whole loaves. Waste, I say."

Blackguards didn't all come in stupid or aggressively mean, but nobody worth shit stayed stuck 'guarding' this stinky flytrap. Those were newguard, with something to prove. Peacekeepers and older blacks fell down hard on any guard they perceived as soft.

Mesmer extended his hand palm up, his smile still in place. "That'll be four coins for each you ate. The extra's for the delivery."

He forced himself not to flinch or cower when the huge hands became fists.

"You know, Diana?" He continued. "Short, big voice, patrols next to the wine cellar." Mesmer's smile grew, wide and full of teeth. "She likes me, and she's a few heads short on her quota."

It didn't feel quite real when they paid up. Not that Mesmer had doubted they would. Nobody used a peacekeeper's name they had no right to. It was suicide.

It was because he had peacekeepers' names to use that Cora had not trusted him with the bag of breads before he'd given her the show she'd paid for. Why she'd left the bread with blackguards, leaving Mesmer to deal with them.

They hated him, the folk that styled themselves as decent. The same who had spat at him for daring to not have parents and a hungry stomach. Hypocrites.

Mesmer hurried away from the gravefield and into the town. The coins and loaves of fresh bread disappeared into his many large pockets. Food had to be hidden: there were always those too desperate to care for consequences. Mesmer wore a suit too big for him, patched up from cast-off reaping clothes, and similar pants. They were old clothes and layers of dirt concealed whatever stubborn pigment still clung to the fabric, but unlike standard-issue wear there had been effort put in the cut. Those were clothes that, when new, had been deemed suitable to be gazed upon by Capitolites behind their cameras.

The little vanity helped Mesmer feel human in a District that couldn't care less.

He ducked into a dusty alley, glad to leave the smell of death behind. Dark eyes soon followed him. They belonged to a pretty young woman swinging her legs on the windowsill of an abandoned half-collapsed house.

Mesmer winked at her.

With her fake District One name, her low-cut colorful dress, and her hair straightened and dyed gold, Ambrosia was one of town's girls. The kids with no skills to offer didn't last on Eleven's streets.

Looking at her, though, you'd not think her unlucky. Lean but not hungry, she was clean and wore reaping clothes all year long. Her place had a soft bed and a working shower, and her hours weren't longer than in the fields. When she got sick, she got medicine, and if someone hurt her, she could hope to get justice.

All this she got from peacekeepers. Not just for her body: for her eyes. Mesmer had also given them his eyes a long time ago. He didn't resent it: without them, he'd be dead.

Ambrosia winked back. She was the same age as Mesmer: fifteen.


Mesmer reached his destination shortly after school-aged kids had come home: an unremarkable house, once sturdy perhaps, but which had been haphazardly maintained by people with little knowledge of houses and even less means. The windows were covered by cracked boards and the half-unhinged door kept shut by a heavy stone.

He tiptoed inside, not too worried of making noise: he could hear kids washing clothes in the backyard from the street.

The kids were three, two outside with washbuckets and the grandparents, and the last, staring straight at Mesmer from the bundles of covers arranged into a tiny bed.

Mesmer's eyes crinkled. Trust the baby to have the best eyes. On a threadbare chair next to the baby, a woman drunkenly snored, slumped. She had a bandaged stump instead of a left leg, which explained why she was home during work-hours.

It probably also explained what had pushed her husband to do something so stupid.

The man Mesmer had come to see watched his children from inside, seated on a stool. He wore no shirt and even in the gloom, Mesmer could see the angry swollen welts on his back.

"Good afternoon," he said softly.

The sharp intake of breath became a pained grunt. The man didn't –couldn't- move, but he recoiled, as if Mesmer were to strike him.

"I have food," Mesmer said.

Nobody could accept this man's money, or his family's, for a whole week. Such was the price of disorderly conduct. People liked it when others angered the peacekeepers, they drew strength from it, respected them. But rarely enough to help them. Not when the price was putting their own families in danger.

"What d'ya want?"

His pained voice didn't rasp 'freak', but it was everywhere in the tightness of his muscles, the helpless rage to his jaw. No, not freak, collaborator.

"The dress." A colorful, uncommonly well-preserved reaping dress. Someone here must've had a peacekeeper ally once, because reaping clothes were free and to be returned after the Capitol sanctioned celebration –reaping, tour, parcel day, wedding or birth- was over.

"I'm not selling my wife's wedding dress!" the man spluttered. He jerked his head towards the wife. Something in his face went slack at the sight of her.

"Those kids go to school looking too hungry, they'll be taken away from you. You bet whoever you got angry is keeping an eye out. I have six pounds of bread. I'll put a word in."

And despite the man looking at him like he was the worst of scavengers, Mesmer would. This man was no big rebel needed to make an example, and peacekeepers knew all went smoother if desperate people knew they could turn to loyal eyes and ears.

"Gah!" the baby gurgled. Mesmer's heart tightened at the open, curious smile. In a few years those smiles would have edges and shadows.

"What'dya want it for?" the man breathed after a tense silent.

Mesmer knew then the deal was done. "Ribbons. For magic tricks. It's much better with color." And Eleven had so few pretty things.

Mesmer's good mood vanished when he passed one of the boys lounging next to one of the town's few stone buildings (and therefore bar). Mesmer frowned in alarm. The boy repeated the gesture.

Mesmer broke into a run.

Street kids watched each other all the time. Peacekeeper support made the streets livable, but not safe. Every day, a thousand messages spoke of who was where, who had what to offer, and who might need help.

Zephyranth was missing. It didn't happen often. It shouldn't happen at all.

And every minute counted.


Mesmer breath slammed in his chest and his heart punched at his ribs. The single loaf of bread he'd saved for the two of them felt like a mockery inside his pocket. He couldn't help imagining the worst. Her clothes torn, her body broken. Imagination was his livelihood, and years of been smaller, weaker and hungry had etched fear in his muscles.

He tried to shut it down: look, I've been running ten whole minutes. Four years ago, I'd have been dying by now. But instead it brought to mind everything that could have happened in ten. whole. minutes.

Zephyranth wasn't stupid. She couldn't be far from where she was supposed to be. She wasn't helpless either: the girls all had such elaborate hair because those hid blades.

He stopped mid-breath when he did find her, a few minutes later, on the second-floor terrace of one of her places. If the ground-floor was somewhat serviceable, the second-floor was rotten. The half-collapsed terrace had no railing, leaving it in full sight of the street. Tied up and gagged, Zephyranth mercifully still had her dress on. Her expression was a non-alarmed kind of scowl.

In front of her, a pale hulking blackguard, his pants still on but not the tunic, seemed to be waiting for something. He hadn't yet seen Mesmer.

Mesmer knew those houses by heart. He climbed two old staircases, knowing exactly where to step and where not to if he wanted to stay silent. Reaching the edge of the terrace, he waved to get Zephyranth's attention. Her black eyes flickered to his.

She blinked. Four times.

It meant 'get him off me. Permanently.'

Mesmer hand went for his heaviest knife. He let out a low whistle and broke into a run. The man's head whipped to him. He raised his hands too late to stop the blade from catching his left eye.

Mesmer was against him, bony shoulder against glistening back muscles. His slammed his second knife in the man's lungs before he could finish his first scream. The trick was to stand behind him, to avoid ruining a whole set of clothes with the blood. Mesmer would just need a new half-sleeve.

The man collapsed in a fit of shocked gurgles.

Mesmer let out a slow breath of relief. Had that been a peacekeeper, it would have been much messier. Both the kill and the getting away with it. Blackguard were brawlers. Peacekeepers were trained.

Zephyranth had almost untied herself by the time he reached her. All the girls knew their ways with knots.

"Insane," she sighed. "He wanted an audience. Wanted the workers to see him… Told him it's the best way to get murdered by a thrown rock, 'specially since he's blackguard. He wouldn't hear no, so I let him have it. Figured you'd show up before the return bells."

"He wanted to pay you to wait tied up for two hours until the workers returned?" Mesmer usually tried not to think too hard about Zephyranth's work. It put him in a foul mood and she didn't need to be on cheering-up Mesmer duty on top of everything else. Still, this was… unusual.

Zephyrath grinned. Her humor was dark and cynical. "You know what? I'd bet I look like a girl he knows. That weird glint in his eyes... He'd not planned this 'fore he saw me."

Mesmer's eyes flickered back to the dead man. It was hard to tell now with half his face knifed and bloody, but he looked young. Maybe only a couple years older than him. Dumb newguard, thinking his new power meant no boundaries. Mistakes didn't come cheap in Eleven.

"Pity, I liked this place." Zephyranth had slipped out of her dress, to avoid staining it. "They'll get the message and cart him away."

It's completely naked, and somewhat expertly, that she helped Mesmer push the body off the terrace and into the empty street. Later, Zephyranth gathered the sleeping bag she'd kept inside. Mesmer carved a cross on the house's door, so everyone who mattered would know to stay away and let things die down for a while.

They walked hand in hand into a more peaceful street, where almost all the houses were whole and inhabited. She kissed him lightly on the lips, the spark to her almond eyes a better indicator of her affection. Erotic contact did nothing to her. Mesmer dreamed of earning enough for two, so she could get the space to make her body hers again. For now, he honed his skills, and barely dared be grateful he had a best friend, someone who was his, lest it be snatched away.

He loved how easily she smiled, all teeth and sparkling eyes, when he split the bread in half. They were hidden under rafter, between spiderwebs and a stain that could well have been an old and forgotten murder scene. They could see the sunset through the holes, it was perfect.

"Got any more of that wonderful bread?" she said, licking her painted lips.

"I could murder one of the Cora's other children. She does have six left."

Zephyranth appeared to consider it. She then giggled. "We grow more awful by the day."

Mesmer grinned back. He then cocked an eyebrow. "Can you imagine seven children?"

Zephyranth lowered her voice. "I might've already had a few if it wasn't for Delfin."

Mesmer's hand tightened over hers. She'd been twelve when she'd started, like most. He'd known her for months already then. He liked to think she'd have told him, if she'd had to abort. He knew she wanted a child, deep down. It was like weed, this desire of a home, a family of their own, something normal, even when they both knew normal came with its horrors.

"Not like that, Mess," she giggled, using the nickname for when she found him stupid, "he gave me contraception, different from the one here. With the one they have in Four they only get the babies they want. Not like here."

He'd never thought about it like that, faulty contraception to keep the kids coming. "Who's your supplier with Delfin gone?"

Peacekeepers rotated every three years. The news ones were always harder and needed time to start to consider that Eleven's people might be human. It made things difficult. No doubt that was the point of rotations.

"Allure. The women from Two are all high and mighty, the ones from One ask fewer questions." She scrunched her face up. "High and mighty too, though."

Mesmer grinned. "What do you expect, coming to Eleven and finding out a street girl has your name."

Zephyranth laughed, throwing back her many dyed-gold tight braids. "Why do you think I cultivate a more authentic persona?" she challenged, a hand resting on her left hip.

"Because there's no need to go to One to find beautiful lady?"

She'd known him too long to swoon at sweet talk, but it still won him a smile. The hardness in her eyes betrayed that she knew all too well that the compliment wasn't beautiful. It was lady.

It had taken her (and earlier him) years to cull her speech from slurs acquired in childhood and learn words taken for granted by any who'd had an education. Time around peacekeepers had made Mesmer realize he had an accent, an accent he had to weaken if he could not completely lose it. Because to peacekeepers, who mostly came from Two's mountains, it branded them as other. And other all too often became subhuman.

The better a magician he became, the more Eleven's bored peacekeepers would want to keep him around, and maybe, just maybe, if he met the right person, he could be one of those exceptions whispered about, who changed districts without losing their tongues and freedom.


Apple Coppicing, 18, District 11

The bell broke Apple out of her sleep. She tuned out her exhaustion and pushed herself out of bed. Dawn cracked through the shutters, casting soft yellow light on the six bunks. Apple shared a room with six other women, ages ranging from fifteen to twenty-four. They all worked for Fenthion, in the orchards, picking peaches and cherries from dawn till dusk in the summer.

"Morning, girls!" Livia said with a bright smile.

The short woman made for half the conversation among the bunks. Apple had no clue where she got her good mood from. Not that she wasn't grateful for it.

"Morning," Apple managed. The pipes creaked as they filled the bucket and splashed their faces.

The water inside was murky, stained with fertilizers and things Apple didn't want to think about. Felchion swore that boiled it was drinkable. He drank it the same as them. Apple hoped he was right.

They dressed quickly in their washed out yellows. Outside, orchard kids as young as ten carried the heavy pots holding the goop of crushed fruit, tesserae-bread, mashed potatoes and the occasional piece of meat. Three dozen workers, male and female, gobbled them down on long wooden tables, taking their last deep breaths before the day'd begin. They'd be no other meal before night.

Half an hour later, Apple headed towards the peach trees. She carried a heavy keg linked to a hose. She began to spray the pesticides on the ripening fruit. She coughed. Her paper mask was joke protection. Whatever was in that spray had burnt away her sense of smell after three picking seasons. Fenthion needed them healthy enough to work, but a working nose was luxury.

Apple worked efficiently, her black eyes dull. Whenever she lifted them, she could see the peacekeeper staring straight at her. They'd rotated again, and Apple feared the day this stranger would grow so bored he'd seek a back to whip no matter how hard they worked. Apple felt old and worn. Every day was the same. She was too tired to enjoy the girls' company in the shed they slept in. Too tired to summon ambition, when the best she could hope for were the orchards for Capitol food, where no pesticides were used, the river water ran clean, and twice as many workers tended half as many fruits. She'd not get paid better for it, though, so what was the point?

What was the point of anything?

She was an orchard-kid, debt-kid, or slave, if you wanted to look at reality in the face. They'd claimed her family couldn't feed and afford five kids. One had had to go, for everyone's good.

"You'll survive this," Grandpa had said. "The others, they'd get themselves killed."

Apple held to that, the belief in his tired eyes. She'd eased a burden on her folks, and that kept her proud. Except, deep down, she knew the problem hadn't been so much 'affording' kids as 'deserving' them. Suspicion of unruliness had begun sticking to her folks. She'd been taken away as punishment and warning.

Such thoughts had at first filled her insides with burning lead. Now the fear was so old it had gone stale. Instead she sometimes dared to wonder, what was so dangerous about Daikon's thoughts of justice, that the Capitol had to be so harsh. She dared think that such thoughts were a threat. That they held power.

The only one she'd caught a glimpse of in four years was her Ma, who also worked picking. Ma had smiled then, a hard smile that said 'I love you, stand firm.'

All that strength, and for what?

Apple often dreamed of running away. But when she pushed those dreams, hoping they'd gain substance, they all ended in death. Clementine had run away the previous year. She'd been a beauty, peacekeepers and blackguards had seen that. Fenthion had pretended not to notice.

So day after day, Apple worked hard and hoped for something good. Some days, she thought she got her wish.

"Heave!" Liam said, as the three workers lifted the crate of freshly picked fruit into the big refrigerated truck. Soon, the return bells would ring. Her muscles were taut and screaming.

When the truck was full, the handsome twenty-year old locked the storage zone, climbed down the truck and gifted them with a dazzling smile.

"Nice work, we're early. We can even take a minute to look at the clouds." He twisted his head sideways. "Look, I'd say this one is a hanged man!"

Apple had to smile. Liam had so much anger inside him, but he let it out with little cheerful comments. He complimented people on their work. He complimented her, personally, from time to time.

"Man's alive, he's sure kicking," she replied in her raw voice, gazing at the orange sky.

"As he should, best to go down fighting," Liam said, winking at her.

Apple wondered if he knew how much the sliver of attention from him warmed her heart.

"Makes the agony longer, though," Chard said, next to her. "He's gone anyway. There's no purpose to fighting."

"Cause we got big and noble purposes otherwise?" Apple said dryly.

Liam beamed at her, the hardness never fading from his eyes. His yellows hid tight muscles, and he was tall. Apple was glad fate had kept him away from the blackguard. In her fantasies, he'd hid and hunched to look weaker when their gazes would come near him, not wanting to sell his soul for a fake taste of power.

They talked sometimes, just her and Liam, short and mostly meaningless talks. But Apple found herself wanting those talks to be more common. She was plain, her puff shorn short, her dark skin cracked from chemicals, and hardly the funniest or smartest girl around. Liam had no girl, though, so maybe, just maybe, whatever she had going for her would be enough.

Maybe, when she'd be twenty and get leave to find a husband, a home, and someone too old to work but healthy enough to watch the kids to come, maybe then Liam would change the way he looked at her.

Apple held her feelings close. Hope fluttered and sang, but it was brittle. Too brittle to dare tell Liam. Shards of happiness wasn't something you could risk to lose.


Legacy Harvester, "Mesmer", 15, District 11

Mesmer wiped his bare muddy feet as best he could as soon as he hit dry ground. He slid on his socks and black dress shoes. The square was paved, nothing like the muddy earth of the streets just behind the lined buildings. Mesmer was lucky enough to be in an official reaping square, one of those that got the wide-angle shots. The parts of the buildings the Capitol would see were scrubbed mostly clean. There were no broken windows, no holed roofs, and every single teenager was wearing better clothes than they had all year.

They still looked nothing like the escort waiting on the stage, of course. That would be silly. Eleven's kids weren't people.

Mesmer escorted Zephyranth to the sixteens' pen, his glare silencing every comment. The girls from the outlying orchards shot others confused looks, not understanding what the deal about the pretty girl with the dyed hair seemed to be. Three other street girls had already joined rank. Two were hookers, the third aimed for threatening rather than beautiful and trained rats to fight to the death. They were surrounded by empty space, as if they carried some sort of disease.

Mesmer greeted them with a bow. His suit was dark red, his trousers white, his tie striped blue, everything fit, everything felt soft, and Mesmer loved it. For all he knew that reaping clothes were lies to show the Capitol an Eleven that didn't exist, he enjoyed the illusion.

He kissed Zephyranth's hand, knowing it was Capitol manners, expecting the condescending and plain hateful looks the gesture earned him. Zephyranth winked and her feelings were the only ones that mattered.

"D'ya think she ever slips and asks him to pay out of habit?"

Mesmer snapped towards the voice. It belonged to a tall girl with a big puff and clearly a small brain. All the onlookers were focused on his face, his scowling green eyes, and oblivious to the hand reaching for one of his –tragically less numerous today- pockets.

"You know nothing," he said coldly.

He was long gone before someone realized a ball full of paint had exploded on the lower part of her dress. Have fun bringing that back to the shop. Ruined reaping dresses had to be bought. How ironic would it be if she had to sell herself to meet the price?

The escort finally stood up. The frills on her wide hat moved to the rhythm of her fan. Her dress was long, a straight fall of complex layers. Mesmer had no words or frame of reference for the fabric or the cut.

"Settle down, Eleven. You are human beings, not cattle."

Mesmer sneered. Eleven was exactly what the Capitol had made it.

"Alright, the boy... Legacy Harvester."

Funny thing about nameless orphans: for your first reaping, they pick the year's ledger of the dead and slap a random name on you. Mesmer had not even landed a good one.

"What's your name?" a boy hissed next to him. It had been four seconds, but by elimination, his section was wising up.

He stood frozen, his jaw set. He hated them all. He was paying for a crime he hadn't committed. At least had his parents left him something, had he not been on his own for as long as he could remember, then-

Then nothing.

He jumped back to avoid a shove. A painful hand grabbed his arm. He jerked away, his heartbeat spiking. He was surrounded by set jaws and balled fists. The Capitol needed a reaped kid and a smooth ceremony. People got beaten off camera if that didn't happen, and nobody around him wanted to pay that price.

Especially not for a street kid.

So Mesmer slunk out, in whatever dignity his new clothes afforded, his mind still reeling from shock.

A high pitched laugh cut through the crowd. "Co caw! Co CAW!"

The tall girl with the ruined dress.

She wasn't the only one. "Co CAW!" Collaborator.

How dare she. Mesmer's rising panic twisted into cold rage.

The bitch had a thin knife embedded in her frizzy hair before most could blink. A small red line oozed droplets of blood on her forehead and cheek.

Her shrill scream was drowned by Zephyranth's and her friends' hoots and clapping.

Mesmer bowed with a smile he willed genuine. After all, this was a show. He'd better get his head in the game.

A disgruntled looking peacekeeper grabbed his arm. They'd done a quick search on everyone for weapons. Of course they'd found none on him.

"I know you," he said gruffly, his light grip the only courtesy Mesmer would get. "Magician. You climb this mountain, we're the ones who're going to bow to you."

Mesmer missed a step. Yes, victory. Suddenly, air entered his lungs again. He stood taller. Winning wouldn't take anything he hadn't already had to do.

His eyes were uncommonly grateful when he met the peacekeeper's. He could count on one hand, the times strangers had helped him up instead of turning away or pushing him down.

He climbed the steps to the stage on his own.

The escort, tall, shapely with a smooth skin that even the vainest peacekeepers from One couldn't match, was staring at him. "There was no need for that." Her stern and somewhat shocked voice proved she understood nothing of the Games.

Mesmer made his smile brittle. He knew he was beautiful, and how it mattered now more than ever. "She thinks I'll die. She thinks it's funny." He didn't need to fake his hurt, his fear.

Something ugly twisted the escort's face before being replaced by fake calm. "Well, still no need for that." It was hard with the accent, but Mesmer thought he heard a rawness. If he could make her care-

"Now the girl… Apple Coppicing!"

She was unremarkable. Field-hand. Eighteen. Resigned and beaten down as she shuffled her feet.

Mesmer despised them all.


Zephyranth had been waiting by the Justice building before Mesmer had even reached it.

"This sucks, even by our standards," Zephyranth muttered, sitting by his side. She hugged herself, her eyes stared down angrily at the floor.

"I'll find a way, I always do. There just are more rules to follow this time." Mesmer felt a childish urge to shout and stamp his foot, as if someone could be cozened into making another boy take his place.

"You'd better, Angel," she said sternly, uncurling to wrap her arms around his bony frame.

"They'll never know what hit them," he reassured her with a thin smile. "It might be easier than the streets even. Gamemakers tip the odds when someone catches their eye."

"Get with the Careers. You won't have to worry about stupid things like water then."

Mesmer nodded slowly. Words didn't seem good enough anymore.

"Mesmer, I…" Zephyranth drew a shaky breath. "I'll do my best here, see if we can get the peacekeepers playing. They'd be proud, no, if one of theirs won? They could boast they know you. They-"

Mesmer nodded again, his lips crinkling despite the weight on his shoulders. Zephyranth was clever like that, getting into people's heads, getting what she wanted without threats or swindling.

"If by any chance you do die, anything you want me to do?"

A harsh chuckle left Mesmer's lips. "Be smart. Marry a peacekeeper and get out of here. Or the biggest blackguard who'll treat you right. Name one of your kids after me."

"Deal, deal, and of course, Mess," she said with a sweet smile.

He ran his fingers over her braids, hating the world with a renewed passion. "I love you, Zephyranth. I'll come back."

"I love you too, it's you I want to marry, Mesmer." she said softly, planting a kiss in the crook of his neck. "In that big victor's house."

That big victor's house. Mesmer hands shook, and yet he was pretty sure he was drooling.


Apple Coppicing, 18, District 11

The town streets were filthy. She couldn't understand how people could live in such filth. At least Fenthion kept his orchards, and his workers, clean.

The reaping was just another chore. A nice one. She had a dress that made her look like a woman and would feast with the others before sunset. Her last feast.

She looked for her siblings. Two were still of reaping age. But with all the people and everyone so different with pretty hair and nice clothes on, she didn't recognize them among the crowd.

She walked with her head down, struggling to walk straight in her heels. Heels. What a joke. Reapings were the worst joke of all. Nothing made sense, not the reasons, not having them so pretty, not the feast, not when you really looked at it. Apple winced. Rebellious thoughts, those. She patted her short dark hair nervously. None of the girls she worked with were her age. The eighteens were a sea of strangers. She had no clue where to stand, if she should say something. If it was rude to look.

She held her hands tightly folded before her. She was on tesserae, just one slip. Fenthion wasn't about to turn down food he didn't have to pay for. Now, all she could do was wait.

She always paid attention to the escort and the reaped tributes, always. She knew what it was to be always ignored, for people to forget you existed. She didn't care if it were district people or Capitol. People were people. Funnily enough it was Fenthion who'd taught her that, when he'd lectured her about respecting other workers in his orchards. No matter what the man did or didn't do, she remembered the words.

She listened carefully to the reading of the Treaty of Treason by Mayor Chives. She was up front and could barely hear him from the chatter around. She then waited politely for the escort to begin speaking.

The Capitol woman didn't look happy at all. "Settle down Eleven, you are human beings, not cattle."

Apple lowered her eyes, a numbness invading her. They had all the power, and they kept slapping them down.

Her first thought was that Legacy Harvester was achingly beautiful and painfully unlucky. Her second was harsher, 'better a collaborator'. She might still have a family, if not for their evil whispers.

Then her sullen mood morphed into something else entirely. She stood straighter to look at the boy who stepped on stage. A boy who could throw knives. A boy with an oddly polished voice. A boy who maybe, maybe had a chance.

A victor would mean parcels, food for a year in the District. Real flour, not just tesserae grain, and wheels of cheese, whole hams. Apple swallowed painfully. She'd been only a couple of months old when Chaff had won. Her only memories of Parcel Days were of staring longingly at a TV screen, burning with jealousy as other districts feasted.

"… Apple Coppicing!"

So much for hoping to have kids with Liam one day. Apple was disappointed not to feel afraid or angry. Proof of how lame her life already was. She dragged her feet up to the platform, keeping her eyes down and disgusted at herself for it.

This was not the person she'd hoped to be when she'd been a little girl jumping on Aunt Zinnia's lap, eager for whispered stories of greatness and justice.


Apple leaned against the window of the small room they'd brought her to. Her only view was the small window of another room. The Justice building was a square gray thing flying Panem flags, and the inside was just as square and cold.

Would her family be allowed to come? Had they chosen not to?

The seconds dragged. Apple kept starting, fooled by the dull thumping of her own heart into hearing steps.

She started in earnest when a blackguard stepped through the open door. She held her breath.

His expression was odd for a guard. His face- Apple's eyes widened. "Daikon?"

Her now twenty year old brother. Her favorite sibling, once. The clever one. The one who'd been angry. The one who'd probably caused the collabs to take a harder look at her family.

In her nightmares, he'd been beaten bloody by peacekeepers. He became one of the vanished.

Apple blinked and blinked again, but she couldn't accept this. Her brother, in black.

"Appy, I'm… I'm happy to see you. I… I wish it were different."

"Things must have changed," she said hoarsely.

He nodded. "Everyone's safe. You kept us safe. It should have been my job. I finished what you started. The others all live in Parcel Nine now."

Yes, blackguards never worked where their families lived. No wonder she hadn't spotted her siblings at the reapings.

"Marjory's got herself an apprenticeship: accounting at the train station. She's a genius with numbers." He smiled, a wan smile of relief that soon was mirrored on Apple's face. Trades gave you a life so much better than the fields.

He held his hands out awkwardly. Daikon, who'd always hugged so easy. She grasped his hands, realizing fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.

Daikon, a blackguard. He'd believed in justice once. He'd been the best of them, once.

Now he was the kind of man he'd loathed as a boy. The men who made it possible for ten thousand peacekeepers to control half a million people. Men who behaved no better than the foreigners in white. Men parents and grandparents threatened their kids with when all other discipline failed.

Apple jerked her hands away from his, as if scalded. It was too much. Her fingers dug into her palm, her knuckles white.

She took a sharp breath.

Daikon's pained gaze flickered to the floor. To her cast-off heels.

She punched him.

Shit, she'd punched him. She blinked as he stumbled backwards, cradling his jaw. His eyes watery and wide from shock.

"Fuck off, blackguard," she rasped.

His eyes went hard. "Appy, we're not dumb kids anymore. Pa had an accident at work last year. He's good. I got him medicine. I-"

"FUCK OFF!"

She was so furious, she almost didn't recognize herself.

"Appy-"

"Peacekeeper's here to tell you time's up," she snapped. Gesturing at the broad woman hovering by the door with sharply raised eyebrows. "You go, do what you have to. Like you always done."

The ball inside her stomach was grief. Grief of a dumb kid who'd been secretly so proud of her rebel brother.


Okay, I debated doing this, because it felt icky to play the black character = slave trope. On the other hand, District Eleven is a pretty bleak place with a whole load of unhealthy power dynamics. I hope I found a good balance between getting the dystopia feel right and not taking the lazy way out for any character.