CHAPTER XIII: DISTRICT TWO


Sergeant Andronicus, 18;

District Two Male, HE/HIM

- A WEEK BEFORE -

CW: MENTIONS OF ALCOHOL, MENTIONS OF ABUSE


Sergeant felt like shit. He told himself that he'd stop hooking up with the mayor's daughter — he didn't even like her like that, for fuck's sake — but there he was, in Adrienne's room, simultaneously blissed out and full of regret. An hour ago he'd just been hanging out at her house, but one thing led to another and now Sergeant was sitting at the edge of her bed with his head in his hands, their clothes in small heaps on the floor.

"Just to be clear," Sergeant said, his voice gruff as she tugged off his shirt, "I still don't want anything to do with you outside this… thing we're having."

She had nothing, yanking off Sergeant's shirt and throwing it across the room without checking where it landed. The girl lightly punted his shoulders back with her hands. Sergeant landed on her comforter with a soft plop.

"Adrienne," he said, his voice taut. "Adrienne, did you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," she whispered, her mouth hovering hotly over his ear. Sergeant shivered. She ran her tongue over his ear piercing and her hands down the front of his chest. "No feelings, I get it. Same old, same old."

It wasn't as if there was anything wrong with Adrienne herself. Well. Sergeant's lip curled to the side. Actually, that doesn't even sound right. Scratch that. No, he had many problems with Adrienne Montgomery, but objectively, she was decent enough, he supposed. She was hot as fuck, with wavy blonde hair and pretty green eyes, not to mention a bangin' body. She was well-known and well-liked by everyone except Sergeant himself, but he couldn't really speak. (The fact remained that he was still hooking up with her, for Panem knew what reason.)

Sergeant figured his strong dislike for her probably came from the fact that his relationship with Adrienne was solely a product of his father's interference. They first met under a monitored and regulated exchange between Sergeant's and Adrienne's fathers, who were a retired Peacekeeper and the mayor of District Two respectively, as well as old friends. They had only met because his father constructed a relationship and eventually a marriage between them before Sergeant even knew the girl had existed. It was fucked when he thought about it that way. When he and Adrienne went on their first outing together at age fourteen, it had felt more like a peace treaty than a date, and he had been miserable. Really, nothing had changed; he still was. Every moment spent within Adrienne's presence felt controlled and unnatural.

That's what I get for still agreeing to pretend-date her, he thought sourly. The plus was that she was always down when he called, but it was getting less fun the longer it went on. Adrienne wasn't exactly subtle with her genuine affection towards him. As much as Sergeant disliked her, he didn't want to lead her on anymore; it wasn't worth it.

His love life wasn't the only place where his father tried to exert his control. His name was Sergeant, for fuck's sake; if that didn't tell someone all they needed to know about Deimos Andronicus, nothing would. In Deimos's last year at the Training Academy thirty-eight years prior, he hadn't made the cut to become a Designated Volunteer, and so thus he enlisted to become a Peacekeeper instead. The man spent the brunt of his early adulthood as a Peacekeeper in District Eleven. Sergeant didn't understand the full extent of what his father experienced in that place during his service, but he figured it was bad. Deimos returned home after his term was up and reunited with his childhood sweetheart, slipping into the comforts that both she and alcohol could bring him.

Maybe he should've been content with living out the rest of his life like that. But he was dissatisfied with the fact he had to "settle" for a woman that had already been married once, for a woman that already had a kid that wasn't sired by him. So when Sergeant was born a year after, his father decided to use Sergeant to atone for all the opportunities he had missed in his own youth.

Deimos raised him to achieve status, success, and reputation, all intangible concepts Sergeant couldn't really care less for. So when Sergeant blossomed into the bodacious, mirthful kid he was, his father only buckled down on him harder. His expectations for Sergeant surpassed the stars, but Sergeant was more than happy basking in the pleasures the ground had to offer him. This aggravated Deimos to no end. He enrolled Sergeant into the Training Academy at age six, forcing his son to claim the destiny that he hadn't been skilled enough to earn himself. Sergeant's talent was prodigious, and in that department, he never disappointed his father.

When it came to everything else, though? Everything Sergeant did outside the Academy was marred by his father's disapproval. Hours after school and training were spent in both the natural and urban jungle of District Two. To Sergeant, the wilderness just meant the unknown, and he could spend hours staking out and charting the areas in District Two he discovered during his escapades.

His adventures weren't just limited to the geographical; he strived to learn about all sorts of topics, meet all sorts of different people, have all sorts of different experiences. Sure, it was no secret that academics had never really been Sergeant's strong suit, but he would never pass up a fun fact or two as long as it was interesting enough to hold his attention. Literature, art, math theorems, he had handfuls of information on a variety of material. Sergeant didn't really care to apply the knowledge he gained; it just felt good to actually know things.

But the real cherry on top was the experiences he had gathered over the years. The trouble he had gotten himself into, the sights he had seen across District Two, either by himself or in the presence of fleeting company. Some moments were unforgettable and others, not so much. Still, each of them, no matter how insignificant, played a vital part in making him feel alive. He thrived in the spontaneity of it all, the excitement and the thrill that coursed through him during his adventures.

He remembered the first time he had gone skiing with a couple friends whose names he couldn't remember for the life of him, the way the cold nipped at his fingers and his ears and the way that his eyelashes froze together after he had cried from laughing too hard. He remembered the night he and his father had a full-blown fight, when Sergeant retreated into the nearby woods and made camp for himself, watching the flames dance and the smoke twirl as he drifted off to sleep. He remembered when he had gotten his first and only piercing on his earlobes, the searing pain only amplified by his friend's unsteady, shaky hand. Sergeant had only gotten one of his ears pierced because he wouldn't let the guy touch his other one, but it had been fun. On his left ear there was a gold hoop, one that had looked crude at first but later became so natural to Sergeant that he stopped double-taking every time he caught sight of his reflection. There were marks all over his body that told a story and served as proof that he had felt, evidence that he had lived.

Sergeant wasn't sure whether he was an exploration junkie at heart or whether his father's attempt to suppress that side of him only caused it to blow up in his face. Ultimately, though, it didn't matter. It didn't matter because Sergeant's rebellious streak meant nothing when his father held an iron fist over Sergeant's future. Sergeant was just playing right into his father's hands, and if sitting on the bed of the girl who was the physical embodiment of his father's stifling expectations wasn't proof of that, then he didn't know what was.

His father's projected life path for him was mundane and average. It was everything that Sergeant hated, everything that he was becoming. How ironic, Sergeant thought to himself, scowling. He rubbed at his eyes, massaging the skin on his cheeks and his forehead taut. A couple of dreads that had fallen loose from his ponytail hung low over his face. From the corner of his eye, he could see Adrienne rustling on her side of the bed. She set the fashion magazine she had been flipping through down on the nightstand and leaned her head on Sergeant's warm skin, the point of her chin digging into the soft part of his back.

"Sergeant," she said, connecting the moles on his back as if she were trying to chart a constellation. Sergeant swatted her hand down.

"What?"

"Do you wanna go to the party?" she murmured. "Janis's. My friend. You know her."

Adrienne took Sergeant's lack of response as an invitation to start gossiping. "Well, she's the girl in your Academy class. She's really good too, but that Cosmos chick knocked her flat off her ass and stole her spot. She was like, having a bad day or something." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, all of the rooms in Janis's house were renovated recently to be soundproof, the hoe. She's got this huuuge place, super modern or whatever. Like, my house is pretty big, but it's dusty and old. Dad won't change it no matter what I say, so not exactly ideal for hosting parties." She huffed, then turned back to Sergeant. "So, whaddya say?"

Sergeant hummed. "Depends," he replied curtly.

"Depends? On what?"

He sat up from his hunched position, running his hands back through his dreads. "There gonna be alcohol?"

Adrienne pouted at him, her eyebrows furrowed. "Well, yes Sergeant, to answer your question, there will be alcohol. I wouldn't have invited you if I didn't think it would be fun."

Fun. What a joke, Sergeant thought. "I'm not gonna go."

Adrienne frowned at him. "What's your deal?"

Quite a loaded question, that one. Alcohol had always been a sore spot for him, and perhaps it was the product of being the recipient of his father's drunken threats as a child, cowering as Deimos loomed over him with a beer bottle clutched in his hand. Sergeant remembered very little about his childhood, apart from the sounds. Glass breaking, his mother's shrill cries, his father's booming voice, and doors slamming left and right; all scenarios he could conjure up with ease because of how ingrained they were inside his mind.

Still, there was no fucking way he was going to tell Adrienne that. Adrienne, who had never known a problem in her goddamn life. Adrienne, who wouldn't even know a problem if it smacked her upside the face. Yeah, she'd be the last person Sergeant would think to confide in. So he consolidated to deliver a partial truth. "I'm not tryna see a bunch of kids throwing up left and right. There's nothing 'fun' about that."

Adrienne only rolled her eyes in response. "Ease up a little, grandpa! It's not even like you'd have to clean it up or anything; it's not even your house," she retorted.

"Doesn't matter," came his response. "Not goin'."

"Why can't you be chill?" She threw her arms up in frustration, the straps of her bra stretching with them. "Is it so wrong for a girl to want to bring her boyfriend to a fuckin' party?"

Sergeant's mind went blank. A lump grew in his throat. His chest heaved up and down, his body shaking with the effort to calm himself down. "Don't call me that. Seriously," he whispered.

She narrowed his eyes at him, glowering. "What, I can't call you my boyfriend? As far as your father and everyone else is concerned, you are!"

The lump in his throat was only getting bigger. Fuck, he thought dully. Sergeant was about to burst. If he didn't get out of here immediately, he was going to explode, the only way he knew how to deal with his anger.

"Stop," he croaked.

It was as if Adrienne didn't notice his anguish, or even care. "No, Sergeant. I didn't ask to be your fake girlfriend, so you need to man up and act the part."

"Maybe you didn't fuckin' ask to be my fake girlfriend, but you never seemed to have any sort of problem with it!" he hollered, standing up from the bed and turning around to face her, totally red. "Yanno, Adrienne, I'm not stupid. I know you've liked me since forever. I know that when we fuck, there are certainly feelings on your end. Funny, I'm seriously trying my best to make it clear I don't like it when you call me shit like that in private, but I can't do anything when you're too fucking delusional to see that I'm never going to look at you like that. I'm never going to be your boyfriend no matter how many times we hook up, because I don't have feelings for you and I've never had feelings for you, and you being in lo-" He stuttered on the word, but instead of continuing, he just shook his head. The heat in his head dissipated, and all of a sudden, Sergeant just felt drained.

"You know what," he croaked. "Forget it. I'm sorry. I'm gonna take a walk to clear my head, and then I'll leave. Don't follow me."

Before Adrienne could protest, he took his shirt and pants off the floor and left the room. Down the stairs he went, wrestling with his clothes before he successfully put them on. He threw open the front door and blundered down the steps, his shoulders easing almost immediately upon contact with the cool, night air.

Still, there was something cold and uncomfortable pressing against his heart. He recognized the feeling almost immediately; it always happened when he started yelling, just like his father. It was an aching reminder that no matter how hard Sergeant tried to stray from the path, there was nothing he could do to stop himself from following his father's footsteps, doomed to become the little soldier his old man had always wanted.


Cassia Cosmos, 18;

District Two Female, SHE/HER

- A WEEK BEFORE -


In this world, there was nothing Cassia missed more than her mother.

Not everyone could say that they were the adopted daughter of a nation-renowned astronomer, but it was a luxury Cassia relished in for the first ten years of her life. There were little things her mother's money and reputation couldn't afford; together, she and Cassia ate good food, listened to good music, and travelled. But out of all this, what Cassia cherished most were the nights her mother would take her stargazing on their mansion's roof.

"There," Mama had said. She ushered eight-year-old Cassia to look through the telescope, using her hand to guide it towards the starlit heavens. Cassia had to crane her neck to see. "Do you see that strip of stars, all stacked next to each other in a straight line?"

Indeed, Cassia could see it, the strip like a glittery diamond barrette lost in the carpet of the sky. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "It's so straight!"
Mama chuckled. Cassia felt like the stars had nothing on the way her voice twinkled in the night. "It's a constellation that only aligns roughly every decade," her mother said. "They call it the Piano Man."

"I love the piano."

She laughed again. "I know, dear."

Earnestly, Cassia turned away from the telescope and back towards her mother, whose pale skin seemed to glow underneath the moonlight. She looked almost translucent, the craters on her face resembling the ones on the moon. Her body was devoid of hair, not even an eyelash. On her scalp was a silky, dark blue headwrap, like the universe itself was blanketing her.

At that moment, Cassia thought that her mom was an exquisite sort of beautiful; sick, fleeting, and temporary, but it was the last time she had seen her look so radiant.

"Mama," Cassia said. She opened her mouth to say something. I love you, Mama.

"Can you tell me about another constellation?" Cassia said instead.

Mama hummed softly to herself and closed her eyes, thinking of a story she could pull from her mental repertoire. After a few moments, she opened her eyes and turned around, facing away from the telescope.

"Do you see the big star, surrounded by seemingly nothing?" Mama said.

Cassia squinted her eyes, perplexed, but after a second she caught sight of the star her mother was talking about. It stood completely by itself, and the immediate sky surrounding it was entrenched in darkness. The star was like a vacuum of sorts, a ring of impenetrable abyss outstretching from its radiance.
"Yes!" Cassia responded, her mouth outstretched in awe. "Why is it like that? Why aren't there any stars close to it?"

"Well, of course, there's a scientific explanation for it," Mama murmured. "But the story people are actually interested in listening to is called Xerxes, the immortal, all-knowing monarch. Nobody can agree what the exact story is, so there are different interpretations floating around out there."

"Like what?"

"Some say that Xerxes was a bad ruler, ignorant to the cries of his people. So the queen betrayed him, set fire to his palace while he was sleeping, took the people, and fled. He burns alone in his palace to this day."

"That doesn't sound good," Cassia commented helpfully.

Her mother stretched her cracked lips back into a smile, showing the brittle teeth she had left. "No, it's not. I have my own version of the story."

Cassia tore her attention away from the sky and on her mother once more. Mama continued speaking, switching into a lyrical tone she reserved for telling stories.

"See," she began, "the general consensus is that Xerxes was the bad guy, but I don't think it's so black and white. As cold as he seemed, there was a depth to him that no one knew, not even the person closest to him. Xerxes had everything he ever wanted, except for the one thing he wanted most; to be understood."

Cassia hummed, trying to concentrate. She felt bad for thinking it, but she couldn't help but feel that the story was kinda lame.

Her mother continued, unperturbed. "In most versions, it says that Xerxes only awoke when he smelled the smoke. But how could that be, if he was an all-knowing? I think that he knew what his wife was scheming, and he let her do it. He let her turn her back on him, and he let her take the people to a better place because he knew that he couldn't give his people what they deserved. And when that palace burned, he stayed and accepted his punishment; to be separated irrevocably from the rest of humanity so that he could never hurt another living being with his ignorance ever again."

Back then, Cassia had frowned. She had frowned and said, "I don't get it." But after Cassia's mother passed, it was a lesson she had to 'get' all too soon. She re-examined Xerxes's tale for years following Mama's death and found herself understanding the immortal monarch an uncomfortable amount.

One: Cassia just wanted to be understood. With her mother's passing, she found herself unbearably lonely. Not even her own grandparents, who took her in after her mother succumbed to illness, could fill the void in her heart. They treated her only with the utmost patience and kindness, and Cassia loved them for it, but she knew she would never be theirs the way she had been Mama's.

Two: Cassia felt ostracized from the rest of humanity. Despite her best efforts, she hadn't integrated into the school system as seamlessly as she had hoped. After being homeschooled by her mother and having no one her age to socialize with for the first decade of her life, she was quickly identified as an outcast by her ten-year-old peers. They would pull their hairlines back and jeer, "Cassia the alien! Cassia the alien!" It got even worse when they found out Cassia liked girls. Middle school had been miserable for her, but luckily since then, the bullying had mostly ceased - mostly. Cassia just resorted to pretending she didn't hear the whispers and the gossip and what the other Academy trainees had to say about how Cassia had supposedly bought her way into the Designated Volunteer position.

Three: She came to accept the fate that had befallen her. Perhaps her mother's interpretation was controversial among the other astronomers of her caliber, but to Cassia, it was the only one that mattered. Her mother's passing had turned her life upside down, but eventually, Cassia began to make her peace with it. The universe had decided it was time to reclaim their biggest star, and as much as Cassia missed her mother, she knew it wasn't goodbye forever. Unlike Xerxes, she wasn't subject to a loveless life for all of eternity. Or, at least she hoped not.

Almost a decade later, Cassia stared at the same starry sky she had watched with her mother back when Cassia was eight. She was in a different location now, her grandparents' rooftop instead of her mothers' balcony, but it made no difference to Cassia. The real treasure was the stars, and the definition expanded beyond the galactic sense. There were stars down here too, walking down lantern-lit streets, laughing with friends. Existing in the rawest sense of the word, in a way that science couldn't even begin to explain. All the same, it was a universe just as unreachable to Cassia as the constellations up above, a beauty she could only admire as an outsider.

She was sure that Xerxes got bored burning alone in the skies, watching the other stars with the same wistfulness she did at the people idling on the streets below her. It was a habit Cassia started when she was twelve; during the summer when she had nothing else to do, she would stare at the people going about their day from her rooftop, making up the stories about their lives.

Tonight the streets were busy, the way they usually were on Saturday nights. A group of girls laughed as they walked past her house, filling up the streets with ambient chatter. On the other side of the road, there was a woman walking her dog- a pomeranian-husky mix, a breed Cassia had always thought looked beautiful. She tried to picture the striking blue of its irises, a stunning eye color on both animals and girls alike.

From the edge of the rooftop, Cassia saw a figure dart out the mayor's house. She leaned over to get a better look, the wind teasing and tugging at her cropped hair. The figure looked to be in a rush, his dreads whipping around frenziedly around his face. Cassia narrowed her eyes, and with a start realized that it was her soon-to-be District partner, Andronicus. She and him went to different academies, but rumors floated around about his incredible aptitude for fighting and soldier-like disposition. It was strange to see such an esteemed figure clattering down the front steps of the mayor's house and off the street looking as disheveled and bothered as he did. Maybe in a week's time Cassia would ask Andronicus, if she remembered.

With a sigh, she got off the glass ledge she had been leaning on and walked to the other corner of the rooftop, where her telescope was. There was a whole other universe waiting for her, and the sky was the clearest it had been in weeks. Cassia was going to take full advantage of the lack of smog, especially since she couldn't be certain when the stars would be this visible after she returned from the Games. With a soft smile, she approached her prized telescope, which had used to belong to her mother before she passed. If Cassia and her mother couldn't be together in the physical world, then at least Cassia could keep the mortal possession she had loved most when she had been alive.

Cassia aimed the telescope skyward, smiling to herself as she caught glimpses of all the constellations she recognized, from both her own research and her mother's stories all those years ago. What she really wanted to see tonight, however, was the Piano Man. According to her galactic charts, (that desperately needed updating, actually) tonight was when it was supposed to be perfectly aligned in the sky. Sure enough, after some scouring, Cassia found that iconic 'glittery diamond barrette' her mother had pointed out to her a decade prior.

She could only imagine the otherworldly tunes that the piano must've been playing. Perhaps there was a starry silhouette up there, clanking lightheartedly on the keys for a luminary audience of suns, moons, and planets that twinkled back in applause.

Cassia would've given anything to be able to attend such a recital, for just one night. Maybe Mama was up there right now, tuning in among the stars. Or maybe she was waiting for Cassia, so they could listen together like they used to when her mother took her to the prestigious concert halls that she had been invited to.

The thought of her mother waiting to be reunited with Cassia brought a soft, bittersweet smile to her face. She had come to terms with her mother's death years ago, but she still couldn't help but be reminded of her everywhere she went. She let herself sniffle once before wiping her nose with the back of her hand, desperately trying to blink back the heat rising from her eyes even though she knew no one could see her from the rooftop.

The cold truth was that Cassia had become accustomed to being unbearably lonely. It'd been years since she'd been loved by someone who didn't consider her a burden or an asset, and she was tired of it.

What Cassia wanted most was for someone that truly saw her. If she had even one person who understood her, she'd never ask for anything else. Whether they showed up tomorrow or in eighty years didn't matter to Cassia, just as long as they'd come around eventually. If only she could trace the freckled constellations on this someone's face and have them kiss her until she saw stars - someone to share her wonders with, both astronomical and otherwise.

There had to be something, someone out there who she was missing, who was missing her the same way. Cassia could only hope that the universe would bring them her way.


DISTRICT TWO REAPINGS

July 4th, 12:01 PM

Female Slot: Javeline Sun / Cassia Cosmos - 7 slips

Male Slot: Brass St. Romero / Sergeant Andronicus - 7 slips


a/n: hey chicks and dicks and hockey sticks it's yer boy B-Dizzle and im back at it again with an epic D&D Chapter starring "district two kids who just wanna explore the world and beyond", sergeant and cassia! thank u to Annabeth-TheTributeThatLived and ladyqueerfoot for sending me their sexy bitches, and Phobie and my irl-part-3-revenge-of-the-sith for betaing this week [moans]

(slaps brookes ass) this bitch sexy just like d2 :D -love phobie

last minute word in but second to last intros guys r we pissing in excitement yet? we are just about to bust out of intro hell [whimpers]

q: if there were two guys on the moon and one of them killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what

$wag im out this bitch,

jar jar bronks