The star-crossed lovers of District 12.
The words were sweeping through the Capitol before Peeta Mellark stepped off the stage. It was the romance that enthralled the nation. For the first time, two tributes went into the Games with a higher priority than their own survival. Peeta was the earnest, handsome, honorable knight in armor, ready to lay down his life for his lady love. As for Katniss, all beauty and fire and deadly skill, she obviously fell for her district partner from the moment he declared his love. How could she not?
Oh yes, nothing inflamed the hearts and minds of the common rabble like a good Games romance. Peeta and Katniss were the first pair to go into the Games together, but they were hardly the first district lovers to have their affections paraded through the Capitol. There was the boy from 4 back during the Eighth Games who had to watch his brother square off against his fiancé. And no one has forgotten the Blight and Jason fiasco of the Fifty-Second where a bumbling Gamemaker and a desperate mentor illegally sent a non-combatant into the arena. And there was a Victor somewhere down the line, no one spectacular, whose girlfriend was sent into the Games a couple of years after himself.
But of all the doomed love stories, perhaps none was as tragic as the Games-cursed lovers of District 10. Elena Perez and Danny Hooley.
Elena was pure-blood Anasazi from a mountain village. She was raised to hate the milk-skinned men from the Settlements on the plains. Her people dwelled in pelt and wicker tents high in the passes of the red mountains that formed the western border of the district. Her neighbors raised goats, mined turquoise and sometimes acted as guides for more adventurous Capitolian tourists who came to see how the 'wildlife' lived. She came down to the Settlements only twice a year; for the reaping and the Victory Tour. There, she huddled close to her parents and her tribe, avoiding even the plains Anasazi and taking great care not to come into contact with any of the vicious Settlers.
The enmity between the Anasazi and the Settlers had existed long before the Dark Days, but the civil war in the district served only to deepen the lines of hatred between the two communities. Their only Victor was a half-breed herself, but the Settlers disowned her as soon as she stepped foot on the train platform and the Anasazi held her in reverence. The penalty for 'incidents' between the two peoples was severe, but the Peacekeepers tended to look the other way when it came to Settler brutality against the troublesome Anasazi. Those who lived in the mountains, tucked out of sight from most of the cattle-raisers below, had the most to fear.
When Danny first saw Elena, he thought he was looking at his murderer. He had gone up to the mountains with a group of his school friends and their fathers. There were some among the Settlers who considered bagging an Anasazi scalp to be a rite of passage, and they had come to hunt. Danny had been nervous, twitching at every other sound and jumping at his own shadow. If deep in his heart he only wanted to curl up back home with his dog and listen to his sister read, he didn't make mention of it.
And then the mountain cat appeared, and he panicked and ran for his life. even as the sun set behind him. Soon he was lost in the dark. He fell, down, down, down into a deep ravine, shattering his leg in two places. Unable to move, without food and only a bit of water, Danny lay in misery for three days, waiting to die.
Elena found him in the early morning hours as she gathered herbs to sell to the midwife. He woke up from a fevered dream, looked up at the black Anasazi eyes staring down at him, the long black hair framing a plain face that appeared beautiful and horrific and monstrous all at once. He closed his eyes, waited for a cold blade to plunge down into his heart or neck. And then his leg was all agony as she bound it. Any mountain child knows how to set a bone and make a splint and Elena had Danny bound and bandaged within an hour. She stood him up with cool and strong hands around his shoulders. He must have had fifty pounds and half a foot on her but she half-carried him up and out of the ravine to a ledge high above the path.
She couldn't take him to the village. They would have killed him on sight. Instead, she took him to a cave she knew of, dragging him when he started to lose consciousness from pain and exhaustion. Elena had learned herb-lore from the old women among her people. She brought him the herbs to keep the infection at bay and draw out the fever. She brought food as well, sneaking out to the cave every couple of days to nurse her charge. She never spoke, not at first, and he didn't push her. He was a monster, she was a savage, and old indoctrinations die hard.
It took a week for her to tell him her name.
It was another before they shared their first kiss.
At the end of the third week, Danny Hooley stumbled down the mountain with a splint around his leg and thirty pounds gone from his body. He walked straight through his front door and greeted a family that had long since given him up for dead.
Danny instantly became a local celebrity. The furor surrounding his return from the dead was enough to draw a couple of reporters out from the Capitol who were looking for some local interest stories during the slow season. When they asked him where he had learned about splints and herbs and survival in a harsh terrain, he credited his devotion to watching the Games. The reporters ate it up.
As soon as he turned eighteen, Danny capitalized on his fifteen minutes of fame to secure a supervisor's job for a cattle ranch near the mountains. A month later, Elena left her mountain tribe to take up residence in one of the Anasazi adobe villages. She wanted to learn more about healing and herblore and the best healers in the district were down on the plains.
She took up a barmaid's position in a local cantina, a popular location for the Victor, Peacekeepers, and the occasional Settler. She treated everyone with a pleasant smile and a hint of flirtation. No one ever noticed that for one regular client her smiles were a little deeper, her looks lingered a bit longer, and their hands shared the briefest of touches when she handed him a pint of beer.
And then the cantina would close and Elena would let Danny into the backroom and they would share much more.
By the time spring arrived, there was a pewter ring hanging on a chain under her shirt and he wore a woven band around his wrist. Secret promises that meant everything. The lovers lay awake at night, telling each other they would make it work somehow. They would make it official in a few months' time, after both of them escaped from the shadow of the reaping. He would take her to the Settlements and force them to accept her. She would appeal to the Victor, beg for her blessing and protection. They would stow away aboard a train and escape to 2, or 4, or 12, or beyond into the great wilderness of Panem.
As long as I am with you, they promised. Everything would be alright.
It was a fine summer's day when a hand tattooed with orchids reached into a glass bowl. A slip was pulled. A name was read.
Elena Perez.
She climbed onto the stage to shiver next to a tall, broad Settler boy. The shouts began and the Peacekeepers moved forward to restrain a young man who was screaming to be allowed to volunteer for Elena, forgetting in his grief and panic that a man cannot volunteer for a female tribute.
But the shock of the moment was nothing compared to when Elena leapt off the stage and ran to her lover, taking his head in her hands and pressing her lips to his until the Peacekeepers had to tear them apart and drag her into the Justice Building.
Every person in the square took an unconscious step back, unable to tear their eyes away from the abomination before them. Even the Victor half-rose from her seat, her mouth hanging open in slack-jawed disbelief.
In the Capitol, Danny and Elena dolls were on the shelves within a day while 'Danlena' fan speculation filled every tabloid and commentary special.
A breaking news story aired immediately after the parade, showing footage captured by one of the reporters back in District 10. A group of men and boys surrounded Danny, punching, pummeling, kicking him down into the dusty ground. They called him a traitor, Sazi-lover, brown man's bitch, and called Elena every vile district slur imaginable as they beat him bloody and senseless. The outrage in the Capitol was so great that Danny was housed in the Justice Building for the duration of the Games and a Peacekeeper was assigned to accompany him to and from work. Elena's parents and four brothers and sisters were also housed in the Justice Building, but for a much different reason. Their mountain village was highly inconvenient for reaction shots.
Elena's excellent demonstration of all available survival skills earned her an outstanding training score of seven. At the interviews, the new Master of Ceremonies Caesar Flickerman tried to wheedle out a bit of information about her training session but it was quickly apparent that all Elena wanted to talk about was Danny, and Caesar simply stopped talking and let her speak. She told them about how she had found him, nursed him back to health, the electric tingle she felt the first time her lips met his, and how she would love him as long as the mountains stood, and when they were dust she would love him more for it. Every woman in the audience had make-up smudges when the buzzer sounded, setting a three month fashion trend.
In the Justice Building, a hard, grim woman walked into the room where Elena's family was gnawing on tessera rations. Danny's mother set down a loaf of real bakery bread and a jar of beef-spread and quickly walked out.
The thirty-fourth arena was a mixture of natural and urban, designed to give no tribute a clear advantage or disadvantage. It had once been the port of a great ancient city, now a crumbling ruin of cement and rusted ship hulls overrun by an encroaching forest. The Cornucopia provided bottles of clean water and nothing else. Elena's survival skills were put to good use. She knew better than to set up camp in one spot and let the dangers come to her. She moved around, never sleeping in the same spot or at the same time. And she knew better than to board any of the ruined cargo ships, no matter what supplies or weapons the Gamemakers used to entice the other tributes.
The Gamemakers kept the dangers of the arena away from Elena for the first week. Danela fever was still going strong in the Capitol and it was driving the ratings up. The Careers this year were boring, predictable, neither beacons of desire nor barely restrained beasts. The girl from 2 made an impassioned appeal to duty and honor and courage in an attempt to rouse support for herself and her allies. She received a cracker.
On the tenth day, the Capitol provided the confrontation that the audience had been waiting for and brought Elena's district partner to her most recent hiding spot.
"You ready to die, Sazi bitch?" asked the big Settler as he circled her like a vulture.
Elena watched him. "I don't want to fight you, McNulty," she said. "Just go back the way you came. This doesn't have to happen now. Have a bit of honor."
He spit on the ground. "Now or later, makes no difference, long as that Sazi-lover you're fucking back home has to watch you die. District honor means giving you what you've had coming, Sazi."
The fight was long and messy. Neither Elena nor her partner was armed. His fingernails raked her caramel skin; he tore out a handful of the hair that Danny once said smelled like campfires and sunlight. He beat her, punched her, tried to get around behind her so he could choke the life out of her or break her neck or bash her head against the stony ground.
But Elena had learned more than just herbs and healing in her mountain village. Her brothers had taught her how to defend her virtue if the need ever arose, and she had hidden this knowledge even from the Gamemakers. He couldn't get a hold on her, she slipped through his grasp time and time again, and when he reached over to claw at her eyes she thrust his arm down onto her shoulder and broke it. He had time for a scream of pain before she delivered a punch between the eyes that laid him out cold.
Elena stood over his unconscious form, a chunk of rubble held in both hands, and the nation watched with batted breath.
"I would very much love to kill you," she said. "I have watched my people suffer at the hands of your friends and relatives for all of my life. But as much as I want to, the man I love is one of you as well, and for his sake I'll spare your life this time."
She dropped the rubble onto his kneecap with a sickening crunch and walked away.
A family in District 10 breathed a shuddering sigh of relief. In the district square, Anasazi and Settler met each other's eyes and looked away quickly. Danny went to work the next day at the ranches, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen. Dark-skinned hands brought him water and bread and squeezed his shoulders before melting away.
Brandon McNulty died two days later when the Gamemakers sank the ships. Half the Careers died as well, drowned or crushed to death. The remaining three split up and quickly succumbed to dehydration. The arena began shrinking as buildings imploded, patches of forest burst into flame, and explosions drove the tributes together. The boy from 12 began hunting, killing the few remaining tributes until he finally found Elena in the remains of an ancient boathouse.
"My name is Bear MacFarlene," he said. He brandished a crude knife he had fashioned from a sharp rock. "I don't' want to kill you, but I do want to get home, so I'm sorry."
Elena stood opposite him with a tomahawk made of a split rock, a stick, and a band of leather. "My name is Elena Perez. I'm in love with a man I should have killed. A man I was taught to hate. I'm going to kill you so that the man I love doesn't have to watch me die. I'm sorry you have to die, but I'm not sorry for fighting."
The seven minute fight ended with Elena's tomahawk buried in his chest. The hovercraft carried out a sobbing woman screaming for her Danny. The ladies in the Capitol wept prettily and fashionably. In 10 the tears were silent and frightened and joyful.
It was the happy ending that the nation wanted to see. The Capitol broke precedent and bowed to public demand by bringing Danny to the Capitol. The reunion was live during the final interview. There were tears, kisses, screams of joy and declarations of eternal love. The lovers returned to a district so different from the one Elena had left a month ago. Anasazi and Settlers crowded the station to greet their heroes. The wedding a year later was held in the district but it was the social event of the year and half the guests were Capitol.
Elena and Danny lived together in the Victor's Village and filled it with love and laughter. In no time at all they had two children terrorizing the Village, Veala and Charlie. The Settlers treated the Victor family with the demure respect that comes from debts owed and not a little collective guilt. The Anasazi, of course, viewed Elena as half-divine the same way they did Bovina.
The district didn't heal overnight. But as the years went by, and the Games went on, the once subtle changes began to blossom. The hunts of the mountain Anasazi ceased. Anasazi walked through the streets of the Settlements to trade and were met with courtesy and professionalism more often than not. The New Sun Day parties at the solstice became mixed events. Children with light eyes and dark skin and hair became a more common sight.
The love of Danny and Elena helped heal two peoples who had caused each other more wounds than anyone could remember. They inspired the younger generation to stop fighting their parents' war and give up their parents' hatred. Slowly the Settlers and Anasazi remained separate simply by culture, rather than open hatred.
And this the Capitol could not abide.
The Games divide. The Games control. The Games do not bring together.
The healing of District 10 would mean the end of Danny and Elena's family.
Veala and Charlie were both reaped for the Second Quarter Quell. They were the first siblings to go into the Games since Jon and Ryla Undersee.
Elena fought for her children tooth-and-nail. She contacted every sponsor, dug up every contact, drilled her children in survival and combat and begged Caesar Flickerman to help them shine at the interviews.
Veala went down during the bloodbath. Charlie died in agony from the butterfly stings.
Elena didn't even know who won the Games until the Victory Ceremony. An hour after Charlie's cannon fired she overdosed on cloudpowder and spent two weeks in a hospital.
The loss of her children destroyed Elena. Danny tried to bring her back with songs, words, touch, silence, anger, and tears. Nothing worked. She sunk into a deep depression and was soon dependent on the hallucinogenic drugs that allowed her to see her children's faces dance in front of her. Danny was nothing more than a shade, a shadow, something she couldn't quite recognize anymore. Eventually, Danny in his own grief abandoned her to her illusions. He found his own escapes in the bottle and young Anasazi women with whom he could play pretend for a few hours.
Danny's youngest nephew Devon was reaped for the Fifty-Second Hunger Games. It wasn't even a fix, but it didn't matter. Elena couldn't save him from the Careers, who tortured him for seven horrific hours as his ally looked on. She was high on a cloudtrip when she arrived back home and didn't even notice that Danny was hanging by his belt in the bedroom.
The Capitol took away Danny, Veala, Charlie, and gave her drugs in return. By the time the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games came, Elena was a withered shell of a woman with a wasted face and dry, brittle grey hair. She could've told Peeta and Katniss that there would be no happy ending for them, that the Capitol would break them and destroy them for the audacity of their love. She would have told them, if she had had the wit or the desire left. She had neither.
Elena had just enough coherence left before the Third Quarter Quell to tell Bovina that she would volunteer for her old mentor if it came to that. It didn't. Elena's name came out of the bowl for a second time. Apparently addicts were more entertaining than eighty-year old women. She hardly noticed the cow suit with a flaming belt, didn't go to training, slurred through her interview, only raised her hand on the stage when Nolan took it and hoisted it up. Elena had spent a quarter of a century dead. The rest was just a formality.
And then the pedestal lifted her into the arena. In the distance she saw a dark-haired girl race to the island. And to Elena's left, a young man with light-skin and fair hair watched her fight with pleading eyes and a scream of helplessness. And somehow that scream tore the scales from Elena's eyes and woke the girl who once dragged a Settler boy back to a cave and nursed him back to health.
She had to save that girl. She had to save the girl to save herself.
She gave Peeta a guttural cry and launched herself into the water. She swam, struggling to the nearest spoke and raced to the island, faster than she had moved in decades.
There was a man there, the golden-haired Victor from District 1. He brandished a sword at another tribute who dodged away, trying to find an opening to get through to the Cornucopia. All Elena saw was the dark-haired girl, and in a moment of desperation and rage the tribute became Katniss Everdeen in her mind and Gloss became the Capitol and she hurled herself at the man from 1 with a scream and fingernails that dug deep into his chest.
It took one slash of the sword and Elena fell in pain and blood as her life leaked out of her. She had done nothing. She died knowing that she had failed, failed Danny and her children and the girl and boy who were in love.
Behind her, Beetee used the distraction to race for a coil of wire sitting in the Cornucopia.