New chapter !
I want to thank you all for your reviews and suggestions of POV. I won't do all of them but some did give interesting ideas.
A lot of you asked for minor characters' POV. I was quite surprised actually but maybe I should have expected it with how you all seem to have liked Hazelle's chapter. So I took the decision to include more minor char's POV. And I will include them in between major characters.
This chapter was going to be Johanna's but I changed my mind. She'll come later. ;)
This chapter is the longest, so far!
Hope you enjoy!
Till next time!
xx
[chapter update: just fixing typos, nothing new]
They Watched
Darius
Darius remembers every day of his life. More precisely, his life was a repetition of identical days, making it very easy to remember.
Except for the first days of his life. This series of days had lasted until his sixth birthday. Although he didn't really remember anything from that period of his life, Darius is fairly certain that it was already a long succession of repetitions.
The second repetitive day of his life started on that sixth birthday. His parents, people he could barely remember, had taken him to the Capitol-appointed doctor of District 2. The doctor had examined him, like he did every child turning 6, and had declared him fit for the training. Darius was thus sent to the training center, never to see his family again. Had he been declared unfit, he would have been allowed to remain with his family a few more years before starting a mandatory apprenticeship to become a mason, integrating District 2's main industry.
Instead, Darius was sent to the training center. During the next four years his days had been filled with physical training and mental conditioning.
On his tenth birthday he was examined once more and tested on his capacities and skills, both mentally and physically. He had been deemed unfit for the Spear. He would become a Peacekeeper and be shipped to another district when he turned 18. Darius wasn't quite sure he liked the idea but at least he wouldn't be Reaped.
Officially, all the children between 12 and 18 in all the districts were eligible to be Reaped to become tributes for the Hunger Games. Unofficially, though, this was not the case in District 2. In District 2 strength and image were everything. The district couldn't afford to send weak tributes into the arena. The weakest children were destined to become masons. The best and strongest were sent to the Spear to be trained as Career tributes, under the cover of training to become Peacekeepers. Those who fell in between those ends of the specter were the ones who became Peacekeepers. Only those in the Spear were ever Reaped or designated as volunteers. Only the best, the strongest, the most skilled, the most ruthless were sent into the arena.
Darius wasn't part of the best. And he was not ruthless. In fact, Darius was soft and sweet – as much as someone from 2 raised to be a Peacekeeper could be. Darius had been deemed too soft for the Spear.
He didn't resent it.
Darius was someone who truly, deeply, sincerely loved life. Not his own life, but human life in general. He couldn't be happier about being a Peacekeeper: his job was literally to keep the peace and protect life!
He remembers being so impatient to turn 18 and discover the beauty of Panem.
When the day finally arrived he had excitedly extended his hand to take one of the twelve pieces of paper in the bowl in front of him. The number on it would be his first assignment. This number would determine his life for the next 5 years! He had hoped for a nice number "4", already able to hear the waves crashing on the beach, or even a "3", opening the doors to knowledge and innovation.
Darius hadn't expected the black ink to form a sad "12".
The officer behind the desk had congratulated him in a voice as flat as the train tracks that would lead him to the next day of his life. According to him Darius was lucky: with him the unit was complete and he would depart first thing the next day to join his new unit on the train and then take over from the unit that had been in charge of 12 for the last five years.
His training partners had made fun of him. He had been disappointed. Soon enough, though, his positive nature shone through again and he promised himself to give it his best. He was now a Peacekeeper, he would bring honor to the force and uphold its values!
He lost his illusions of greatness the very next day, both literally and figuratively. His commanding officer, Officer Cray, was a grumpy old man who resented being sent to District 12 after all his years of loyal services.
It didn't take long for Darius to realize that District 12 was a very far cry from the happy district his instructors had talked about. They had depicted a district where life was hard but the people were hard workers and happy to take over the huge responsibility of excavating the precious material that was coal.
They had at least been right about one thing: life in 12 was hard. Harder than anything Darius could have imagined.
At the beginning he had struggled to fit in: he was the youngest of the unit, the only new recruit. His head was still full of the ideals and rules that had been drilled into it for the last 8 years. There were so many infractions to the rules here in District 12 that he could hardly keep up! And Officer Cray didn't arrest half as many people as he should!
When his stomach started rumbling without interruption, eating at his lawful uprightness, he decided that maybe Greasy Sae was more of a cook than a criminal.
Every time he would come to the Hob for a bowl of grub he would observe the people surrounding him. He soon came to admire them. Life in 12 was hard. Even more so in the Seam. But these people were resilient. They fought every day of their life. They fought the earth deep in the tunnels. They fought for every piece of value. They fought for their life.
It didn't prevent children from dropping, their scrawny bodies nothing but bones.
It didn't prevent them from being blown up in those dark dark tunnels of theirs.
But Darius admired them all the same. There was a fire in their eyes. Not so much in the blue eyes of the merchants, but in the grey eyes of the Seam. Oh, the fire was dim, naught but a small and fragile wisp of flame. It was subdued, suffocated by fear, life, and the weight of the world.
Nevertheless, these people knew how to survive.
Some of them more than others.
Darius especially admired Greasy Sae, for her audacity to sell chicken soup filled with fish bones. And Ripper, for her unending supply of medicinal alcohol (Darius amusedly thought that it must be one of the most efficient medicines in Panem, for so few people seemed to stay hurt for long after buying her some). And Mrs Everdeen, for keeping Death away with her hands and her plants.
Most of all, Darius admired two people. A boy, barely more than a couple of years younger than himself, and a girl, maybe six years younger. They were both children of the Seam. Dark hair, grey eyes, almost scrawny but strong and proud, daring the world to bring them down.
The boy, Gale, always looked at Darius with a flicker of defiance in his Seam eyes.
The girl, however, managed to hide it better. Or rather, she didn't look at him with defiance. Her defiance was both more discreet and more obvious at the same time. It was less acute, less intense, yet, radiating from her whole body. It was second nature to her.
Darius had heard the stories. About how Katniss Everdeen almost died of starvation, along with her baby sister and her mother after her father went up in smoke. How she had fought her way back to life and taken upon herself to care for her family when she was 12.
There was something about her that fascinated Darius. Her reaction every time he offered her a kiss for her merchandise was only a bonus. Darius didn't really think of her in a romantic way. He definitely wouldn't refuse a kiss from her but he teased her more for her reaction than for the kiss in itself.
He didn't know what exactly fascinated him so: her eyes, her youth, her maturity, her strength? He didn't know, but it drew him in like a moth to a flame. The fire in her eyes did burn stronger than in other people's eyes.
Like every year, Reaping Day came. Darius remembers being part of the 4-men squad sent to fetch one Haymitch Abernathy, sole Victor of District 12 and drunk beyond coherence.
Darius didn't quite know what to think about Haymitch Abernathy. The man was a wreck and had been for as long as Darius remembers. He had known of the Victor from 12 for as long as he had watched the Games. Darius had always wondered what made him drink so much. Other Victors weren't like that. So what had happened? Darius knew that his Games had been special, a Quarter Quell. He didn't know what that had entailed but was this the reason for his addiction? Darius couldn't help but feel disdain for this man. Sure, he was a positive guy but even Darius couldn't fathom why someone would so easily throw away his life like that, and with it the life of every tribute that he had to mentor.
Darius didn't resent Haymitch for not bringing any Victor home with him after each Games. A tribute was a tribute, destined to be the districts' way of making amend for their rebellion almost 74 years ago. That was the price to pay for their treason.
Even though, it would have been nice to have some of the benefit brought on by a victory for one year.
Once the drunk had been seated on his designated chair, Darius went back to his post and observed the Reaping take place.
He was as surprised as the rest of the world when Katniss Everdeen volunteered.
He had sighed in his helmet: he would miss ruffling her feathers. She was a nice person, what a pity she would not come back.
She had.
And not alone.
Darius admired her all the more for what she had managed to do. He had known she was a fighter but he hadn't expected her to come back. She had proven him wrong. She had proven everybody wrong.
She was once more walking around in the Hob, as if she had never left.
But she had.
Darius could see the subtle differences. She now bought what she needed with money instead of buttons or old clothes. She wasn't so scrawny anymore. She was more confident.
She was also more guarded. She smiled less. She looked tired. She was jumpy.
She suddenly reminded him of Haymitch Abernathy.
What had happened?
Darius had watched the Games, like everybody else. But what he had seen didn't account for her change. Something had happened or was happening that didn't appear on the television screens. Something had changed her. He didn't know what.
Her strength still fascinated him.
From his twelfth birthday until his eighteenth, Darius had been taught the importance of hierarchy.
Hierarchy was the structure that made the world go round and that allowed life to exist. Without structure and discipline, the world would be thrown into chaos once more.
Darius had been taught to obey his superiors, always and forever. Failure to do so, he had been told, would have dire consequences.
Darius had been taught to respect authority.
It was difficult to respect Old Cray, who smirked every evening when he opened his door and chose which poor young girl he would graciously save from starvation.
Commander Thread, however, was a man Darius could respect. The arrival of the new Head Peacekeeper had been brutal, to say the least, but Darius had realized that he was the one in the wrong, him and his unit, for having grown complacent and authorized crime to run rampant in District 12.
Despite how much Thread was right and crime did run rampant in 12, now that the new commander was correcting that, Darius' stomach was once more empty.
And when he had seen the blood pouring from the mangled flesh that had been Gale Hawthorne's skin 19 whip lashes ago, Darius had been glad that his stomach had contained nothing he could vomit.
Darius had clenched his jaws at lash number 5. He had frowned at lash number 8. Surely, Gale had learned his lesson. His stomach had started squirming around lash number 15. At lash number 20, Darius' hand snapped to Commander Thread's wrist, maintaining it in the air, already moving onto lash 21.
Darius had been punched into unconsciousness before realizing what his body had done.
He had regained a semblance of consciousness around what his colleague informed him was lash number 38. His vision had been blurry, but not enough not to wince at the state of Hawthorne's back.
He remembers his eyes widening slightly when Katniss Everdeen threw herself between Thread and her friend. He remembers wincing as the clashing sound of the whip striking her face resonated in the silent square.
He had lost consciousness again right after that.
He had woken up in a white cell. He did not remember a lot of what had happened after. He remembers understanding that he was not in District 12 anymore. He remembers a man in white and large pincers. He remembers screaming as the pincer gripped his tongue. He remembers pain.
White, blinding pain.
Blood also.
The calm and detached voice of a Peacekeeper officer telling him that he had brought it on himself and that he would learn how to obey properly.
An Avox.
They had made him into an Avox.
They had pushed him into a new repetitive day of his life. A day filled with silence in his ears and cacophony in his head. A day with orders and commands and weird people and no way of screaming his rage and injustice.
Darius had been lost. So lost. How could he have been so wrong? He had been proud to be a part of Panem, to be a Peacekeeper, to protect life.
Darius had never set foot in the Capitol before. He did not understand what he was seeing. How could this exist in the same world as the Seam? How could these people be so unburdened, so carefree, so wasteful of life and resources when children were dying of hunger in District 12? Had he been wrong to believe what his instructors had told him about the world? Never before Darius had doubted his beliefs. Never before had he felt so betrayed by the country he had sworn to protect and serve. This was no justice!
Never before had Darius been disgusted by people. The excitement of the Capitol at the announcement of the Quarter Quell broke something inside of him. It broke his faith in a world of justice and fairness.
There was some negative reactions about the Quell in the Capitol. People were sad to lose some of their favorite Victors, for surely, some of the good ones would be part of the competition! And just like that, the sadness was replaced with excitement.
Not in Darius. Darius remained sad as he understood that Katniss Everdeen would be a tribute again. It was a pity she would not get to live the life she had fought so hard to keep.
A new day of his life started the day after the Reaping. He was sent to the brand new training center, where he was to serve the tributes and mentors for this year's Games. He did not know which. He was assigned a "colleague", a red-haired Avox girl. She barely looked at him. She silently motioned for him to follow her to an elevator.
The elevator had no buttons in it. The Peacekeeper guarding it activated it with a key. They arrived in a small room with replacement Avox clothes and two basic beds. Darius understood that they were going to stay there for the duration of the Games, denied even the smallest attempt at privacy. A blue light lit up, indicating that the tributes' elevator was approaching. They both got out of the room and waited their arrival, as a good Avox should.
Darius remembers watching the doors of the elevator open to a sight he had not anticipated. Before his eyes stood District 12's very own team. He should have known.
He remembers seeing recognition pass through the eyes of Haymitch Abernathy, quickly hidden behind indifference.
He remembers seeing recognition, surprise and horror pass in the eyes of Katniss Everdeen before she managed to hide it, too.
This day of his life was going to be one of the longest, even if it would only last two weeks.
Darius remembers the strong grip Katniss had had on his fingers that day at supper when they both crouched down to pick up the pieces of the plate she had voluntarily shattered. He remembers feeling so many emotions pass through him and through his fingers during that brief moment.
Recognition, acknowledgement, regret, comfort, sadness, anger, injustice… Too many emotions to identify.
Darius had learned more about Katniss Everdeen in these two weeks than he had after years in District 12. He had also learned a whole lot more about Haymitch Abernathy. And the Capitol in general.
Peeta Mellark was very straightforward. Darius hadn't learned anything new about him.
About Haymitch Abernathy, Darius had learned that he also drank the finer stuff. And that he was angry. And resentful. And troubled. He learned that the man would do everything in his power to get at least one of them out of the arena. That he could coach and give advice. That he was far more complex than anybody had ever given him credit for.
Darius regrets having thought so badly of him before.
Katniss Everdeen was the one he learned most about.
He learned that she was even stronger and fiercer than he had thought. That she was angry, and determined. That she didn't trust easily. He also learned that she had nightmares. Horrible nightmares, if her screams in the night were anything to go by. He learned that she was terrified – but didn't know what about.
Darius also learned that Victors were different than what he had thought.
Peeta, Haymitch, Katniss… They were all haunted in their own way.
After a few days the female Avox started to write to him on a sheet of paper. Her name was Lavinia.
Thanks to her, he had learned that all the Victors were haunted. And angry.
Darius hadn't known what to think of all this.
The first day of the Games had arrived quickly.
He remembers the look on Katniss' face when they made eye contact for the last time. Once again there had been too many emotions in that contact to decipher. He was sure of one thing, though: it had been a goodbye.
Darius hadn't been authorized to watch the Games. He had been ordered to remain in District 12's floor and wait for orders.
They never came.
Instead, came four Peacekeepers and before he knew it, he was unconscious.
Darius remembers every day of his life. His life had been a long succession of days repeating themselves again and again. They were not worth remembering. So he decided to forget them.
Darius remembers every day of his life. Those days that had been worth remembering. Those days when he had crossed the path of Katniss Everdeen, a girl as bright as life itself.
Darius was someone who deeply loved life. Yet, as they cut off another part of his body and a scrambled cry tore out his sore throat, he couldn't help but wish he had died long ago.
