With thanks to AbbyCoraby123 for your review of the last chapter.
District 12 is made of wood and rusted metal, if Emil was to quantify it. The scent of smoke in his hair and clothes; the warmth of the summers in the Meadow, the bitter cold of the winters by the fire. Tailings, the piles of refuse left over from extracting coal from the rock, had formed hills both old and new in the landscape, sliding piles of black slurry that would eventually be taken over by vegetation, become as much a natural part of the landscape as everything else, besides their unnatural sloping.
That was how he thought of his home- the only home he had ever known, that and a small run of trees outside the district. Smoke and coal dust, wood and rust.
And now Emil stood in a station with a glittering sunlit roof, everything clean and shining, clear glass screens showing his face. Nothing had a scent, everything was so clean- for one used to distinguishing plants for safety by scent, a matter between life and death, it was a jarring difference. It was, he thought, much like the expensive Capitol medicines her mother would occasionally pay a Peacekeeper for- clean glass bottles, a label filled with precise chemical information, a scentless liquid within. It was clinical, traceless.
The Capitolians that existed in such traceless lack of existence bayed for blood they'd never want on their clean floors. He wondered what sort of existence it was to live in a place with no need for anything. He supposed that's why they bayed for blood.
Around him as he was escorted to a large, double-decked car with an open balcony on the top, Capitolians milled about, took his picture, waved enthusiastically. The young girl that had been Reaped alongside him seemed more enthused in the day since she had been Reaped- she had looked on the edge of death before, with hollow cheeks and glassy eyes, but the rich fare of food on the train had added colour to her face and life to her eyes. Emil noted this, filed it away in the extensive list of notes he kept on the Capitol. He made a supplementary note beneath that it was likely to hide the worst of malnutrition to the Capitol's eyes.
He wasn't particularly interested in the fact, but he remembered what he saw, and it helped. He had little strength, but a knowledge of plants that rivalled even his mother's had kept him alive through many a winter. He had created lists and files in his mind, and by filing them had created a system that permitted him to access them at will. Each 'file' corresponded to a medicine on the medicine shelf of his home; something that never changed, something he knew by memory with ease. The Capitol went with the rarely seen scentless medicines on the far right of the shelf; their clear glass held memories and knowledge he had filed in its depths long ago.
As Emil was escorted to a slim metal building he was casually informed by his escort to be the 'Remake Center', he mentally ran his fingers along the dusty caps and stoppers of the medicines, stopping at the smooth metal cap of the Capitol medicine, adding the information to its clear depths.
It took Emil a moment to realise he was running his finger over a stopper in reality. His thin cotton jacket held a stopper; a bottle, as he inspected it further. He pulled the bottle from his pocket; and caught on a breath.
It was a tiny copper bottle, stopped with cork. Only two days ago, his mother had given this to him, asked him to collect some honey.
It had been the last thing his mother had given to him, said to him. It would likely be the last thing he would ever hear of her voice.
He had forgotten about the tiny copper bottle. He held it in his hands, metal warmed by his pocket, metal shaped in a thick cylinder, a bottleneck stopped with cork.
"Oh, hey! Is that a token?"
He raised his head to the overweight man in purple curls. The escort, sensing discomfort, attempted to assuage it by talking.
"You know, your district token; to take into the Games, to represent you and your district." He leant forward to look at the copper bottle, as did his fellow tribute- she was dark-haired, a Seam girl, and while Emil wasn't predisposed to prejudice, Seam children had stolen enough medicines from his mother for him to be suspicious of her interest. He returned the bottle to his pocket, unwilling to give up the last link he had to the home he knew.
"Yes, it's my token." Emil smiled, knowing he had to at least try to appear friendly for his escort to try and get him sponsors. "My parents own an apothecary."
Well, an apothecary stall in a black market you would have them shot for owning, but details were details, Emil mused.
The large, open-topped car stopped at the Remake Center, and he and the young girl were ushered out, through camera flashes and surging crowds, into a dark building. The darkness out of the sunlight threw Emil's vision, and he paused to stop and permit his eyes to adjust; unfortunately, the group of people that then emerged from the shadows to take him by the arms and upstairs seemed to disagree with Emil's stalling. He stumbled into a curtained area, and just as he adjusted to the darkness a number of high-intensity lamps were switched on, making Emil squint and shy away.
The next few minutes passed in blurs of light and shadow- strange, grotesquely altered people, asking him to strip down, put on a thin papery gown, and lie back on a chair. The people around him, high-pitched and frustratingly enthusiastic, picked up strips of paper and laid the sticky side of it to his legs. Before he could realise what they were about to do, and persuade them against it, they had yanked- and, judging by the pain he felt a second later, taken half his leg with the strips of paper and wax.
"What was that for?" He managed. His prep team ignored him.
"He's a little dirty, but nothing we can't fix; plain, but just look at those gold curls! I would kill for those curls!"
Emil snorted lightly. Come in with me to the arena, and you just might get the chance.
Gritty pastes, copious shampooing, wax (which he quickly grew to hate) and clippers; after a solid hour of being harassed on a chair and trying to persuade them to stop (and discovering that his silver tongue wasn't effective on the gaggle of silver-dyed Capitolians that were his prep team), he was told his clothes and token would be sent to his quarters, and he would be sent now to be dressed and placed on a chariot.
He nodded, smiling, because against them he could do no more than that, and being true to his feelings of injustice and mild anxiety would do him no favours in surviving the arena.
But as he was escorted to the stylist, a tribute appeared to have had a different opinion. A short boy, perhaps older than his height suggested, crashed backwards through a curtain, halting the procession of his prep team. The boy was almost entirely naked, save for underwear and a battered, dirty beret- which the boy had two hands firmly over the top of.
"You're not getting it, I don't give two shits what you're about to do with it!"
The boy's prep team implored him in varying tones of frustration to take the hat off, give it over, they'd return it to him in just a moment. Still the boy refused, clamping one hand over his head and using the other to flip the Capitolians off.
The Capitolians shied back in unmitigated horror, and Emil realised the boy's middle finger ended at the first joint. The boy, in response to their shock, curled his lip in savage jubilation.
"Look," one pleaded, stepping forward tentatively as if afraid of attack. "We just want to clean it."
"Well, I just want my sleeping pills, but I'm not getting any of those, either, so tough luck, lady!"
"I'm male!" The Capitolian said in indignation.
"Male, female, you've got cat whiskers attached to your face. Wasn't going to mention it, but..."
Emil found himself liking the guy in the hat.
With an air of finality, a Peacekeeper revealed themselves from the thrown shadows and curtained labyrinth, drawing their baton as they advanced upon the group.
"Woah- woah!" Emil yelped, jumping forward and raising a hand in instinctual response, holding his hands out between the Peacekeeper and the group. The Peacekeeper tilted their head and raised their baton, and Emil jumped back slightly and raised his voice.
"If you leave a mark on me, the Capitol's gonna see it!"
The Peacekeeper stalled. They tilted their head again. Emil knew what they meant. Go on. Emil's voice raised slightly in pitch; he hadn't meant to leap to anyone's defence, it had been merely instinct that had put him at the front of the crowd. But now he was here, his only way to assuage the situation was put his silver tongue to a practical use.
"Everything calms down if he gets some pills, right? So just give them to him. No harm, no foul." Emil said with a weak smile, voice thick with anxiety as he watched the baton shift in the Peacekeeper's hand. He didn't care about the guy in the hat anymore, he just didn't want to get hit.
The Peacekeeper regarded the melée carefully. Then nodded, once, curtly. They turned, walking back to their place in the shadows.
Emil let out a sigh, dropped his hands. The Remake Center had dropped to silence, empty and strained.
His prep team rushed over to him, shocked and angry, ushering him to the stylist with indignant fury. Probably they thought it was 'acting up' to have done what he did, so soon to the chariot rides.
Quite frankly, he agreed with them.
He shot a glance backwards, to the tribute in the cap, so angry, so desperate for sleeping pills. He looked vaguely shocked at the moment; standing in silence, now permitting his prep team to tentatively take his hat, usher him back behind the curtains.
What the hell had left him so in need of sleep?
Emil walked through shadows and curtains, missing the sunlight of home.
Ahh, tributes meeting tributes- what we've all been waiting for. Perhaps not for them to meet each other in their underwear and flimsy paper gowns, but hey- I can promise more awkward and slightly hostile meetings to come! ..Yay.
In any case. Thank you, as ever, for reading this far. We're getting tantalisingly close to the chapters I'm really excited to write.