Content Warning in Rust's section for sexual assault and violence.
Cordelia Korver, District Four
"Cordelia, if you don't get down from there very soon, you will miss your entrance." Her stylist Ronan said, "And I worked incredibly hard on it so I will be very very cranky."
If it had been anyone other than Ronan, Cordelia probably would have ignored him completely. She was on the upper catwalk of the interview stage, the area that lighting techs used during the show. Now that training had ended, there were not a large amount of things that she could do to challenge herself. So when she saw the series of suspended walkways, she knew that she needed to climb up there. And now that she had, someone was trying to get her down.
Still, it was Ronan, who had only done good things for her. So she figured he at least deserved an answer. "The show hasn't even started yet. Which means I have seven people before me. That's plenty of time." she called back at him.
"Normally, yes." He said, "But like I said I planned a special entrance. So you have to get ready… pretty much now."
She had to admit that sounded intriguing. Which was good, since Cordelia knew herself well enough to know that she was probably going to do what he said anyway. She had never been particularly good at standing up to people. At the Career Center, she had been trained in several weapons, and excelled all manner of combat. But the fight that was conversation had always been something that didn't quite make sense to her. It got her confused and flustered, and she either finished the discussion with violence or gave in completely.
Ronan was a Capitolite, so probably not particularly gifted at combat. But he was incredibly large, so she had mostly been doing exactly what he said. Thankfully he had been one of the more helpful people on her prep team.
She found a nearby ladder and instead of climbing it placed her hands and feet on the outside of the metal frame and slid down. "So what are we doing?" she asked.
"You'll see." He said, smiling like a madman and beckoning her to follow as he started to walk towards one end of backstage.
She followed him and ran into Titania in the process, who was flirting with one of the girls responsible for corralling the tributes as she waited for her entrance.
"Are you going to hit on Kallia Haversham herself?" Cordelia joked as she walked past.
"Of course I am. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity."
She finally caught up to Ronan, who was talking to a group of Capitolites dressed in plain black clothes, a surefire symbol that they were working tech.
"Could they all get their individual wires? I want it wooshy." Ronan said.
"Wooshy we can do."
"Excellent. Cordelia, come meet the most brilliant technical team ever."
"That's really not necessary, sir. But thank you."
"It's not necessary but it's true." Ronan continued, "So. You know how I've been making you do that weird thing where you're in a harness attached to wires and you have to stay upright?"
Cordelia nodded. It had been particularly strange, but it was something to do and ended up being a pretty good exercise for her balance and core muscles so it had turned out all right for her.
"Well this is what that was for. Your dress has a built in harness. We're going to hook you up to some wires, and you're going to float in for your interview."
"Float in?" Cordelia asked incredulously.
"Yes. Like an angel. It will be beautiful, just trust me."
Cordelia didn't really trust anyone, but the concept alone was interesting enough to get her to go along with it. The tech crew spent some time getting her set up, attaching the wires to her metallic green dress. The dress had several small trains, and each of those were rigged so that they would spread out like waves as she descended. The whole process took a while, so Ronan lent her his tablet so that she could see the interviews that came before her.
They were predictably solid. Careers were mostly trained in combat, but if One and Two were anything like her home district, they trained at least a little bit for the camera. Dash came off as honorable and serious, and Zella managed to make her aggressive personality seem like a likeable wild child archetype. Cordelia was rather impressed, though she wondered what the career dynamic would be like if she had been able to maintain that during training.
Elixane and Ashlar were very charming, and Cordelia was thankful that all of the careers had coordinated their angles beforehand, as her and Elixane could come off as pretty similar if they weren't careful. But the tribute from Three stuck with stories about her sister, with her cocky hotshot attitude being there but understated.
Cordelia was many things, but understated was not one of them. As Ashlar started his interview, the techs ushered her back up to the catwalk, where she waited on a high ledge for her cue. As he finished, she felt the wires grow taut and she stepped off of the ledge.
The few seconds where she didn't know whether she would fall or not were some of the most thrilling moments she had felt for a while. It reminded her of cliff diving, and how it almost felt like flying.
She heard the crowd gasp and applaud as she came into their view, and it made her bold. She was told that all she had to do was stay upright and look mysterious, but she had learned during her training how to do a front flip. She did one as she descended, and the crowd went wild. Cordelia did notice that it twisted up the fabric a bit though, so she imagined Ronan would be slightly upset with her.
She landed and shook hands with Kallia as some people on the stage removed the wires from her dress.
"How are you doing tonight Miss Korver?" the host asked.
"Oh wonderful." She said, "More than wonderful."
And she meant it.
Rust Waxy, District Nine
Rust didn't have a plan.
This was not an incredibly rare thing for him. He was not a particularly meticulous person, and had a habit of forming an odd idea at the beginning and adapting from there. However, as he stood behind the scenes watching Nettie Sue complete her interview, he didn't even have a vague direction to base his actions on. Back in District Nine, no one had been that interested in speaking with him. He had tried for a while, but his desperate need to be liked never overcame everyone's disdain for him. So eventually he gave up, and his social skills suffered for it.
His prep team, who he assumed were the people who usually helped with that sort of thing, had already given up on them. During training they had sort of pretended to care, giving an encouraging word on occasion or trying to find a way to motivate him. But once his score had come out, Rust instantly became uninteresting in their eyes. Just another walking corpse.
His outfit was proof of that, a simple black suit that was not particularly well tailored. It was definitely the worst outfit that he had seen so far. The girl from Five had seemed so vulnerable in her pink princess dress. It made everyone instinctively want to protect her. The Sixes had been placed in bold geometric designs, the girl in a black dress that had constellations on it to match her shaved head. And the pair from Eight had been put in matching silver and gold outfits that were so beautiful it almost caused Rust physical pain.
However, clothes were the least of his problems. Nettie Sue had been the only one to give him advice, and it had been something he hadn't wanted to hear.
"Tell them about your father," she had said at dinner the night before, "I'm going to talk about mine. And no one can compare to your story."
Rust didn't want to tell it. He didn't want to be the son of Flint Corna to all of Panem. He just wanted to be Rust Waxy. Unfortunately, he knew well enough how this sort of thing went. If he didn't give the Capitol something interesting about him, he would have no help in the Games. Then the only thing Rust Waxy would be was a name on a list of the dead.
Nettie Sue stormed off of the stage rather quickly. Rust hadn't been listening so he couldn't quite tell what had angered her so much. But he did find himself amused at how everyone on the stage seemed to scramble about, unsure of how to proceed.
"None of these assholes matter." she told him as she left the stage, "Sponsors or no sponsors, we'll figure it out. Just remember that you're a great kid Rust. They can't take that away from you." With that she knocked over a nearby tech and left the stage. One of the ushers recovered from the shock and prompted Rust to take the stage.
"And here is our next guest, Rust Waxy!" Kallia said, seamlessly adapting as if everything had been pre-planned. She was clearly a professional, with her gown made of crystals and her smile that never seemed to falter. Rust was intimidated by her, but he had no choice but to conduct this interview.
"Hello." he said.
Kallia smiled. Despite everything, he couldn't help but smile back. "She's a bit of a firecracker isn't she?" The woman said and gestured towards the direction Nettie Sue had run off.
"Yeah. She's always been like that." Rust said, "ever since I've known her at least "
"You two knew each other before?" She asked.
"Yeah. We went to school together for a bit, before she moved. I guess we were friends."
"You guess? You didn't know if you were friends or not?" The question seemed a little accusatory, but the way she worded it was gentle. Curious, not judging.
"Well honestly most of District Nine stays away from me. Nettie Sue is the only person who has ever even tried to be my friend."
There was a sad sigh from the audience, which was probably a good sign. But it was also distracting. He decided to focus back on Kallia.
"The entire district? Surely you must be exaggerating just a little."
"I'm really not." Rust took a deep breath. He knew now was the moment. But he didn't want to do it. "We're a small enough district that everyone knows who I am."
There was a tense silence which Kallia broke with her kind voice, "who are you Rust?"
"Fourteen or fifteen years ago, District Nine had a serial killer." There was a gasp from the audience, "Women had gone missing. Only a few had shown up, mutilated and showing signs of… of sexual assault. One day the killer broke into my mother's home. He attacked her. Before he took her away, her husband came home. He killed the man, who was eventually identified as Flint Corna."
There was another gasp. Rust wasn't surprised. He imagined that news probably travelled to the they had heard about how, after Rust's adoptive father Flake killed the man, peacekeepers tracked down where he was living. It was an abandoned warehouse. They found no less than twenty bodies there.
"Nine months later, I was born."
Rust didn't know why he did it, but for a moment he looked out at that audience. He had been expecting fear, disgust, or even pity. There was plenty of that. But many of the faces were smiling. They looked excited, almost hungry. Rust realized that for the first time people weren't afraid he was like his father. They were hoping for it.
The thought chilled him to the bone.
Mattock Coccia, District Twelve
Mattock had meant to pay attention to all of the interviews, if only to understand the angles all of the tributes were taking. However, Peeta had gotten into one of his bad moods, ranting wildly about mutts and murder. So he spent most of his time pressed up against a bathroom door, trying to calm his mentor down.
Working with Peeta was a complicated experience. Some days, he was intelligent and insightful, telling Mattock about aspects of the Games he never would have thought about. But other days he was practically a ghost, silent and vacant. Of course even those days were better than the type he was having now. There were days where he was erratic and violent. Mattock was pretty sure on days like this he didn't know who any of them were. So he was in the middle of trying to remind him.
Anthracite had helped him by filling in how all of the other tributes had done. From Diamond, putting forth a cold and calculated persona, to the boy from Ten pacing during his interview. She had scoffed at how sweet and polite Carlotta was being, and merely dismissed the two Elevens as 'nice'.
But now it was her turn. Mattock decided that Peeta was a lost cause and focused on his district partner instead. He knew she was going to do well, she had always been particularly great with people. But he still worried a little bit.
"Hello there Miss Weitz." Kallia said with a large grin, "You made quite a splash at the parade. What does it feel like to be the most talked about Twelve since Katniss Everdeen?"
"Weird." She said with a slight laugh, "I mean the attention's nice. But also being compared to Katniss is not really a good thing, you know? Not that I'm anything like her really. I could never be the girl on fire. I hate fire. All things hot really, ever since the heat wave a bit back."
She was rambling, something she did when she was nervous. Mattock thought it was adorable.
"What happened in the heat wave?"
"I almost died, actually. I got heat stroke. If Mattock hadn't carried me to the hospital I would have been a goner."
There was a gasp from the crowd. Mattock gasped as well. He had told her they shouldn't mention anything about their past together. They had already attracted too much attention. He suspected their stylist was trying to kill them after the parade outfit. Anthracite clearly didn't understand how much danger they were in.
"Well look at that folks. We have another team who know each other. You're saying Mattock saved you?"
"Not just that." Anthracite said, "He ran the whole way, in record breaking heat. By the time he got to the hospital, he collapsed. The hospital admitted him too, but he lost one of his kidneys in the process. Mattock gave up a kidney for me. If that doesn't say selfless, I don't know what does."
Mattock stared at her in disbelief. Seriously, what was she doing? It was one thing to know each other. It was another to talk about how he had saved her. How close he had come to dying himself.
"So it begins again." A voice rasped from behind him. The bathroom door was open and Peeta was looking at him with eyes that were simultaneously searingly intense and very far away. "A boy saves a girl. A boy falls for the girl. And then the girl turns out to be a mutt and tears him to pieces."
Mattock ignored Peeta saying he loved her. That was something he would never admit to.
"You've said that before." Mattock said, "that she was a mutt. I haven't met her of course, she died before I was born. But her sister seemed pretty normal."
Suddenly his mentor's eyes snapped sharply back into focus. "Prim's alive?"
"Yeah." Mattock answered, not knowing how someone who lived in Twelve wouldn't know that, "she founded the hospital. Without her, both Anthracite and I would be dead already."
Peeta collapsed onto the ground, once again distant. Most of the time he was afraid of the man, sometimes he was scornful. But in that moment he felt a deep sorrow towards him.
"What happened to you?"
Ushers came to retrieve Mattock since it was almost his turn for an interview. But he heard the victor's answer as he walked away.
"I don't actually remember."
AN: So this was a chapter, wasn't it? We're getting so close to the games and things are starting to build a bit. Also, you might have noticed this reads a bit easier now. That's partially because I fixed the glitch where FFN was eating my words and partially because I finally got a Beta Reader. Thank you very much to Luna's Fanworks for making sure my I's were dotted, my T's were crossed, and everything was capitalized as needed. I hope you all enjoy, are staying safe, and have a wonderful day.
