Reaping Day.


The swiftness of the train is nigh imperceptible. After all the time Colt's spent riding it up and down from Capitol to Ten, she still gets the urge to check the windows, watch the scenery streak past her. Make sure they haven't closed her in a finely-appointed box. Boots propped on a finely-appointed ottoman, she nods at the projection on the wall.

"Ha. Do you see that? Watch this part again. Pay more attention."

Her tribute bleakly fumbles for the remote, rewinding the tape several seconds. Ten's Victor of fifteen years past mounts the stage in sharp strides. The energy in her small frame is like a steel spring, and the commentators pick up on it. She curls her lip at the cameras, brushing off the hollow applause. When her partner is marched up, a field hand more than a foot taller with at least forty pounds on her, their handshake is a single jerk that makes him wince.

"You can pause. What was his name?"

The girl shrugs.

"Of course you don't know. Nobody cares. He's gone." Colt shrugs back exaggeratedly. "Decomposed. Maybe nourishing grass. The Careers, what were their names?"

"I don't know, okay? I was two when this was live."

"Good try, ray of sunshine. They replay all district Victors' Games in school. Keep thinking."

Ray of sunshine- Rumen, wasn't it- presses her head against the plush burgundy couch. The color scheme in here is not comforting. From oxblood to rust, and marble in organic liver-pink swirls for the countertops. Colt suspects they did it on purpose. "I don't know. I have no idea. Fi- Fiona. The girl from District Four. Is that-?"

"Astonishingly, correct. Must not have been passing notes and chatting shit with your girlfriends that day. Why do you remember her?"

She squints at the frozen feed of the 46th Games like a weasel contemplating long division. "They played her on screen the most. I mean, besides you. She took over the Careers after the wolves got the Two guy. She had- she had- red hair. I think."

"I hate this job." Colt takes a pull from her flask. The cap rattles as she seals it in tight, deliberate twists, punctuating every other word. "Probably, you will never know how much. If, in a year, due to outrageous whims of fate, you are riding this train again, speaking with a glassy-eyed adolescent whose skillset covers 'hair-braiding' and 'sometimes paying attention to free lifesaving material,' you will begin to understand."

Rumen touches her short braids before she pulls back, narrowing her eyes. A pulse of anger trapped somewhere in this stringy girl. Good. "Fiona and you were on screen the most because...you had a rivalry. You were the showdown."

"Play her Reaping."

The tape rewinds. Other than Ten, Four gets the longest Reaping spot. The boy goes first, forgettable and too young. And when Fiona volunteers-

"Play it again," Colt says, while Rumen is already reaching for the button.

They watch the red-haired girl make long, easy strides to the stairs, waving carelessly, with lean strength wired in her limbs and an arrogant slash of a smile. Her handshake whitens the boy's knuckles.

"Obviously, nothing coordinated," Colt says in an acrid plume of vodka. She points with the flask. "If somebody else won, nobody would care. But I did when I watched the feed."

It lines them up as the Reapings slide into the Capitol, the chariots. Colt's bluntness and Fiona's edge are everywhere. Brief shots of them edited into long, knowing stares, and a slip downward to the Ten's tightening fist. When Fiona rides out in the brilliant, striped colors of a venomous sea snake, Colt's hair and cloak are pulled back, ragged sand-brown. A trickster coyote. They still tell those stories at home. The girl bares her canines, left unpolished and chipped.

"You set each other up for it," Rumen says quietly, arms folded. "You made each other part of the story."

Colt raises an eyebrow. "Well done. You approach the low end of my expectations."

"But you didn't just win that way. You already knew how to- the knives, and hiding in the dark."

"True. I would've won on my own. But Gamemakers can kill anyone with a trap or a mutt. Doesn't matter if you're the strongest. Only thing that will make them want you alive is a story they can sell."

Rumen looks down at herself, fingering the checked linen of her Reaping dress. Probably the only clothing of value she has ever owned. She's not the most pitiful tribute Colt's had, by a long shot, but she's not a lot to look at. Seventeen years old, sunburnt and gawky. Middle class. Medium height. Average all the way to her shoe size.

"Not much to work with. But we have a shot." Colt steps over and pokes her spine with stiff fingers. "Sit up. Back straight. Always slouching, the teenagers. You didn't freak out at your Reaping. Walked calm."

"I was in shock-"

"I know you were in shock. Do I believe you're some miracle killer with iron balls? Bullshit. But the Capitol doesn't know better. Now watch your Reapings. The current feed. Find a rival, someone you can mirror. It could almost look like you know what you're doing."

Even while she chews on her cheek, she's switching to the current Reaping coverage, playing on every commentary feed in Panem. "That's the most important thing?" she asks, dread and dismal hope muddled in her face.

"Yes. You need it. Make them believe you have it." Colt grins long, cracked yellow teeth. "Notoriety."


Azriel won without picking up a weapon, and nobody will ever do it again. His tributes ask him how to get out unbloodied. They plead for the secret trick, as if it's just a switch they could press. More than even surviving, they think he can show them how to win without guilt.

Shoulders and elbows withdrawn at odd angles, he ducks his head, and rubs his eyes under the weight of their desperation. The reality is too cruel to spill. Oh, kid. That isn't what I won.

Like as not, they'll never have to find that out.

Brody is the boy's name. He's sixteen and lived over his family's butcher shop. Not much sun damage on him, and he's well-fed, with big hands. Big shoulders. He knows how to use tools. He prepared his own plate when he got on the train, slicing cuts of beef and dark bread- only the things familiar to him, while he ignored the fresh fruit and desserts that had Rumen stunned. He's ignored Azriel too. Silent hostility steams off him like stink from roadkill three days old.

Az waits for a better moment. He could get to Brody if he needed to now, but it'll help them both if the shell opens first. He waits patiently in the dining car. Colt moves her girl to the viewing room. Brody is a stormcloud pinned inside a boy, ozone-heavy, chewing through his defiantly simple rations. He moves only around the other end of the car.

After a while, Az breaks out his beading kit. He sends an apologetic twitch of a smile to Brody. "Keeps my hands busy."

The knife saws roughly through the loaf again. Az turns to the box of tiny glass beads and string. Partly, this is therapeutic. They let him do it in the institution. His hands aren't steady, but he can concentrate on these little points of color instead of all the dangers of a human. All the...

The knife is grating. Lamplight splinters through the beads. He shakes his head and bends closer to them. He's running a sequence of crystal blues and greens. The other thing is, this is something that he can create. And if it falls apart- it's nothing living. It's fine if it isn't perfect. The pattern can be broken.

Brody thumps onto the cushion next to him. Azriel's hands tense in his lap like white butterflies, and go still. He unknots the string from them. "I'll make you some tea before we begin. It'll help you focus. You're going to want-"

"That's what I want, huh? Tea and some cute mind tricks?" The boy's face is carved from the mesa. "You figuring out what backwood allies to stick me with? Get them to take care of the business. I'll just turn around on them later, right?"

Azriel sighs. The beads roll between his thumbpads. "Sounds like that would be a wash. I-I don't have to put you with allies. You can still apply my instructions-"

"I don't need your fucking instructions, Ryder." He doesn't look around, doesn't take his eyes off the wall. His fists dig into his knees. "You know what I do all day?"

"You prepare the meat. Sometimes it's- it's shipped to you, but you keep pigs in the yard too. Divide up the carcasses, wrap them in paper. Left-hander. The shoulder's...bigger. You would have one of those harnesses for the animals. You cut their throats in it." Azriel rubs his ear. "You enjoy that part, Brody?"

"You should be teaching the party tricks to the girl. Not like they'd help her either. At least Flanagan's got a Victor."

"...Yeah. Miguel killed six tributes in seven days with a length of pipe. He never comes out of his house, and I hear him breaking furniture for hours at night. He doesn't sleep, he doesn't talk, and I- I don't know what he eats. That isn't what you want."

"You're a weak fucking bastard." Brody's voice shakes. "Do some of that analysis. Figure me out. Am I going to win by talking a guy off a ledge to the mutts? You show your tributes that stuff, and they think they can do it. And they all die."

He reaches for Azriel's shoulders. In a flinch, blue and green beads scatter across the floor; Azriel acts automatically to lock Brody's wrists. His breath is noisy and wet, trapped in his throat.

"Get me the bread knife." He lets go. Whitened fingerprints flush purple. He wipes his forehead, where his hair is sticking in damp curls. A nauseous pulse drums somewhere in his stomach. "Keep it sheathed. I-I-I'll show you what you're asking for."

You can't win without guilt. You can't win without blood. He knew the smell of both even before they put him in the arena.

Every year, he tries to forget all of it, but every tribute scratches it up again, and he doesn't know how much he can scar before it'll all bleed free.