pre-reapings, part one: sarcastrophe
desecrate your temples, only hell and hate remain;
don't look for crows to scatter, prepare for judgment day.
lethe muralai, district six male
…
" - haven't heard a thing… think he knows…?"
"Would be pretty foolish… believe what they've said about this place…"
"People talk… hard to imagine… just a kid…"
"... murderers can't be treated like… doesn't matter how old…"
"Do you think we'll find him?"
From his perch over the Lowtown sewer tunnel, Lethe Muralai remains perfectly still, clinging tightly to the pipes beneath his rigid body, so forceful he's not sure he could let go even if he wanted. Inside his chest, he can feel his heart pulsing - fluttering in his chest like the wings of a startled bird, too delicate to be anything more than puzzling. Lethe Muralai is not a delicate person, after all. Not one to be easily frightened or unnerved by something as mundane as a Peacekeeper's chatter, even if he is the subject of their conversation.
Still, as the voices grow louder and the footsteps draw nearer, he can't deny that something akin to fear seizes his body, his white-knuckled grip on the surrounding pipework feeling suddenly too light, too… brittle. His breath catches and falls silent as the uniformed officers pass beneath his perch, pausing briefly to shine their light around the intersecting tunnels.
It seems like an aeon before they bother to speak.
"... looks clear," the one leading concludes, their tone brusque and decisive even as their partner seems to draw closer to their side. "We should keep moving."
"You can say that again," the second Peacekeeper mumbles, drawing a laugh.
"Don't tell me you're scared of the dark, Pharix."
"The dark? No. Just people who like to hide in it."
Smart little lapdog, Lethe thinks, his lips quirking upward into a half-smirk, entirely of their own accord. It would be simple enough for him to kill the Peacekeepers if he wished to; he's got the perfect vantage point, the perfect set-up for an ambush. He even has a sharpened hunting knife stuck against the lining inside his boot. He could pull it out, roll sideways, drop onto the first Peacekeeper's shoulders… and boom, dead. Simple as that. Stars, with the underground being here, he even has a cover…
(But it's better not to raise too many heads. Lethe doesn't exactly need to be drawing attention to himself at present, and he doesn't need the Peacekeepers getting suspicious. Suspicions mean more patrols, and given he's actually taken a bit of a shine to his latest hiding place, he'd rather not have to deal with a bunch of armed forces marching through and fucking it up for him. After all, he only has so many sewers left to run to! Getting another one marked under watch would be… well, a mess is putting it lightly.)
Beneath him, he can hear the first peacekeeper huff.
"Get yourself together, mate," they say, grabbing ahold of their partner and dragging them off down the hallway. "We've still got an hour left on patrol, and I could do without you jumping at every shadow."
Their footfalls taper off. Eventually, they recede from earshot entirely.
Lethe allows his body to relax. Idiots, he thinks to himself, with a small shake of the head. The least the Capitol could do is train people to be competent in their work. Although given how ill-mannered and pathetic Tav was, is it really such a surprise?
… Tav.
Now there's something Lethe really doesn't want to think about - the asshole that was-or-nearly-was his good-for-nothing stepfather. For the life of him, he will never be able to understand his mother's decision to shack up with that demented bully of a lapdog. Her own philistine views and irrelevant opinions aside, the fact that Keia had not only managed to find, but also get engaged to, someone just as insufferable as herself continues to astound.
(- couldn't stand them, all their prattle, the irritating chatter, the arguments that spilled over from his mother's self-righteous lips, increasing in fervor with the growth of her new relationship. Everything from her mouth was Tav, TavTavTav, and the Peacekeepers are so good to us, Lethe, don't you see, the Capitol is so perfect, so wonderful, look at everything they do for the people, your father would have listened to me, your father would have supported me. It's funny, you look so like him, but you couldn't be more different (couldn't be more of a disappointment)... you know he was the kindest man I ever met, couldn't hurt a fly…)
(But you. You're cruel, crude, rebellious. An aberration to your father's name. Do you think he'd be proud of you, Lethe? Of what you've become, of what you turned yourself into?)
(You're a monster, he remembers his mother spitting at him, lying prone on the floor with thirteen stab wounds imprinted in her chest, roses blooming across the white canvas of her blouse. We're your family, Lethe. Your family!)
That's the thing about families, though… no matter how much work you put into preserving them, there's always dysfunction lingering beneath the surface. Fragments of venomous words, curses, half-formed insults bitten back one too many times. When you toss in a dash of politics on top of that…
Family accounts for nothing. Especially in Six.
Lethe grits his teeth and pushes himself up from the pipes, shimmying backwards along them until he's reached the service ladder leading back down to the tunnel floor. Regardless of what he thought of his family - mother, brother, stepfather and father alike - it doesn't matter now. They're dead. And they aren't coming back.
(Really, Lethe did the world a favor by pumping them both full of bullets. Some people are just better off dead.)
hollister crowe, district twelve male
…
He should have expected this.
Honestly, 'twas foolish for Hollister to believe his crimes wouldn't catch up with him; foolish of him to believe he wouldn't be caught eventually, hauled away in shackles and damned to live out the rest of his eternity in a prison. One can only drain so much blood before humans start to whisper… or in the case of his foster parents, scream. They had been so in shock at the sight of him draining Veronica, they'd almost frozen.
(Hollister had never felt more monstrous than he did in that moment, watching the blood drain out of Heather and Derrick's still-warm bodies, their beady, dead eyes gazing up at the ceiling as he turned them over, first almost-father, then almost-mother. He thinks a fright had caught him, for he scarcely remembers killing them, only curling in on himself after the deed was done, blood smeared over his face and dripping from his mouth, fangs still coated crimson by the blood almost-sister so graciously shared. Even now he's uncertain why exactly he killed her - Veronica, after all, was the draining that changed everything, disrupted all semblance of normalcy Hollister had in his life and led him to break under the weight of what he'd done. If he had let her live, he could have kept his family… could have hidden himself, could have pretended for a few more years. Nothing would have been upended. Nothing would have changed from his life-before, even with his condition…)
No.
He shan't drive himself mad by missing them. He shan't, because he knows humans and their ilk, knows that even were the Hargraves to consider him their kin, they would have been unsettled by his true nature and damned him for it. They had done harm enough to themselves by providing haven to a Seam rat - some filthy, vagabond child that the others in their station had always considered lesser simply by proxy of his birth. Hollister may have been meant for finer things than the Seam, but he had never been loved in the Hob, nor had he been respected by any of the waremongers that inhabited it. The Hargraves may have cared for him, but their ken considered him no better than the dirt on their boots, just as they had his true-mother.
(He has memories of Belladonna Crowe; they are few and far between anymore, the ones he's kept fading away further with every year that passes. Hollister can scarcely recall what she looked like, as the image of "mother" in his mind is phantasmic, a wraith made from patches of white and grey, with long black hair that fell past her waist. He remembers the feeling of her, though - safety through hardship, love through bloodshed. She had perished in the winter, as so many of the impoverished in Twelve do; Hollister sometimes wonders why he hadn't followed. Truth be spoken, he often wonders whether the gift of vampirism is as much a curse as not; as much as true-mother told him that he was strong, he has proven to be almost absurdly weak at times for his bloodlust. No control, no sensibility…)
Stop that, Hollister chides himself, his head aching as he presses his hands over his ears and ever so slowly leans forward to rest his forehead against his knees. His legs are tucked close to his chest, a fragile shield protecting his body from being seen by the Peacekeepers milling about in the halls, spurning him with every glance and spit they cast his way. He loathes the very idea of hiding from them, but for the time being there is nothing he can do to retaliate against his captors for their mockery and egotism, lest he encourage them to kill him rather than spirit him away into the Games.
Hollister is no fool; he knows they've already petitioned for his name to be cast at the elections, just as he knows Twelve has few better candidates than the resident Seam-born freak who craves the taste of blood. He'll be sent into the Hunger Games soon, with the whole of his homeland wishing him dead, and caring not for his opinions on the matter. 'Tis no surprise, really, if Hollister considers the accusations surrounding him. The denizens of Twelve are simpletons, fearing that which they are incapable of understanding; they look at him and see something wicked, but do not bother to examine the state of his being, nor the enlightenment it so clearly demonstrates.
(He alone has ascended. He is not bound to the wretchedness of personhood like so many ill-favored folk around him. But does Twelve recognize that in the least? No. They look at him and they see the embodiment of horror, and in doing so throw shame on his being, branding him nothing more than a vicious monster. He does not expect such a backwards crowd of mongrels to revere him, but they should at least acknowledge his superiority where it's most obvious…)
He sighs. Moves his hands away from his head and back to his sides, curling his fingers into his palms. The nails bite into his flesh, but there is no redness to accompany the stinging pain caused by crescents imprinted on his skin. He eases himself up, resting his back against the wall once more. He breathes. His eyelids fall closed. The world is silent.
Hollister Crowe deserves imprisonment. And he deserves the Games.
Twelve's ire, though… that's a different story.
lethe muralai, district six male
…
The rebels are on edge when Lethe slinks back to his quarters, just beyond the tunnel leading from the Underground's Lowtown compound into the sewer main.
He can hear whispers, hushed hisses made all the more apparent by the distance his fellow squatters keep from him. Wandering eyes seem to follow along with Lethe's every move as he slips into the alcove he's come to call his, silently bewildered, openly nervous. There's no judgment from the rebels - one of the perks of wiping out a bunch of loyalists, Lethe supposes. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend,' isn't that the saying? I suppose in a sense we do have a common goal - hiding our existence from the Capitol dogs prowling the streets.
Although… none of the usual camaraderie that the dissidents typically try to conjure up seems present this evening. To be frank, it's making Lethe's skin crawl. There's something wrong with the air of the compound, a tension that's only made more prevalent when he rounds the corner separating base from hideout and comes face-to-face with a baton, snapped in two and carelessly discarded upon the cement of the ground. Lethe's eyes narrow as he nudges one half of the broken implement with the side of his foot, as if trying to discern exactly how the thing was broken.
(Batons are military grade, made in Three's tech-hub with the sturdiest flexible metal he knows of. Tav used to brag about the bloody things all the time, telling stories about how the rebels would try to snap them during a raid, how what wound up breaking was usually human bones instead because the accursed things were too strong for their impoverished bodies. The weapons were brutal, effective… and fully capable of breeding submission when necessary. So unless this is a fake…)
"I'm sorry," a familiar voice says plainly, and Lethe turns, face an implacable mask of stone as he sizes up the cell's leader. He doesn't know her name, but he doesn't need to; they respect each other well enough to keep out of one another's way…
… and to hold conversation when it becomes necessary.
His lips purse, mouth stuck in a tight line as he carefully lifts one eyebrow, questioning without asking. The rebel crosses her arms over her chest, scowling as she spies the baton near his feet. She reaches down to grasp one half of the debris, looking it over before stuffing it into her satchel. Clean up duty. Of course.
"When were they here?" Lethe asks, and the rebel's scowl deepens.
"About an hour ago, give or take." She nods at the hall behind him, entirely unlit save the bits of sunlight streaming in through street grates overhead. "One of the jackwipes went through your shit. Lucky for you, I pulled your pack out in advance. They didn't get anything."
… he's not going to thank her.
"Mouse?" He asks instead, and his ally shrugs one shoulder, almost careless.
"Had the good sense to get out of there. Figured he went after you."
"Ah," Lethe sighs, taking a deep breath in as he flexes his hand. Dammit, of all the possible times -
"He'll find his way back," the rebel says, in some unnecessary attempt to be comforting. She licks her lips. Lethe spins around, turning his back on her.
"I know." He leaves it at that. Half the baton remains on the ground; Lethe doesn't bother grabbing it, preferring instead to crush the infernal device under the heel of his boot as he walks on down the tunnel, toward the cloth-covered door just beyond Grate Five. "He's a smart mutt."
As am I.
"Hey, Muralai," the rebel leader calls, and Lethe stops in his tracks, his own surname unfamiliar to his ears after so many months spent trying to put it behind him.
"Yes?"
"... watch your back," she says after a moment, some unspoken thing causing her to almost hesitate as she speaks. "There's something big coming. You don't want to be caught up in it."
"I won't be," Lethe says, practical as ever. He may be hiding with the Underground, but that doesn't mean he's part of it; organizations have never been his style. He doesn't like relying on other people. The rebels are a useful mechanism for survival right now, but that's it - he has no loyalty towards them, and his gratitude only extends as far as his anonymity. So long as he's hidden, they can work together. But the second this… cover… becomes compromised…
"Have a good evening," he finishes, turning toward his alcove and pushing back the curtain to reenter his space.
(Much to his chagrin, Mouse's bed is as empty as his own. Fucking Peacekeepers. If they got anywhere near him…)
Lethe pinches his brow, raising a hand to rub at his forehead. He's going to have to move on sooner or later. It's just a matter of time before the raids get serious - and he's not going to wind up caught in the crossfire.
Prison is a fate worse than death. He'll execute himself before he lets the Capitol drag him off to a jail cell.
That's a promise.
hollister crowe, district twelve male
…
The darkest hours of the night are always the most eventful.
Hollister has spent many a witching hour lying prone upon his bed, his eyes fixated on the small window in his cell, oddly transfixed by the gleam of moonlight-on-metal-bars. Though he never leaves his cell, sometimes he finds that if he thinks hard enough, he can project himself beyond it - back into the streets of Twelve, where he would stalk nighttime hangouts and prowl along backalleys in the Seam in search of willing prey.
No, not prey. Prey sounds so… innocent, and nobody in this District is truly innocent -
(Hollister's mind tells him that is a lie; the Hargraves were innocent. Veronica's only true fault was being annoying, but aren't all younger siblings meant to frustrate their elders, cause them strife and frustration as much as provide camaraderie and - dare he say it - empathy? Why, oh why, had he killed her? Why had he killed any of them? In his right mind, he knows he is not truly so other as he would pretend - nothing more than the beast his mother made him, still lugging about the baggage of his rough childhood and his mother's melancholy. He should have known better than to drink from one so close to him - should have known better than to slash her throat and revel in the mess that spilled free of it, because she was my sister, wasn't she, she was - but I never fit in with them, never could have belonged to that family, they were not mine, they were never mine - why did I do it, why, why, why…)
- he would know. He's spent his entire life here, hasn't he? Ten years dwelling in the underbelly of a debilitating cesspool, amidst beggars and thieves and scavengers, and two in the community home, being shuffled back and forth between families who didn't want him, humans who couldn't stand him, for the very thought of harboring a scourge like him in their homes had set their skin crawling. Most people, even then, could tell he was rotten as all earthly hells, and thought it better to dispel him from their abodes instead of inviting him to remain.
Young Hollister had been distraught about the rejection, but the Hollister of the present can only feel bitterness toward those who turned him aside. It would not be incorrect to say he harbors a grudge, although he would scarcely admit it if anyone were to ask. His feelings on the community home do not matter any longer; it is as dead to him as his mother, as lost to him as his almost-family, as insignificant as his own person, left to burn and break and suffer in this dingy prison from which there is no escape. Certainly, his blood boils at the memory of his circumstances, his maltreatment at the hands of mortals, but humans do not hold power over him any longer, much less former guardians and failed rehabilitators.
Besides, he thinks, what need have I for rehabilitation anyhow? 'Tis not my fault humans are so easily charmed and beguiled, nor so easily felled by the mere touch of a blade. Every creature I killed was undeserving of life, and moreso, undeserving of sympathy. I mean, did any of them show concern for what I suffered in my childhood, for what mother endured to prolong my life? Did any of them bat an eye before locking me away in this hellhole and tossing away the key, or writing my name on that slip of paper for the Quell they so seem to desire? Of course not. It is only natural for those with power to crush the beings they deem lesser.
(And 'tis not I who am lesser, in this scenario. 'Tis not I who should be fearing for my life, or drowning myself in shame for my acts of supposed atrocity. I have only done what any in my position would do. Haven't I?)
"On your heads be the consequences, Twelve," Hollister murmurs. "I will return. I will…"
"What was that?" The half-dazed voice of a guard practically snaps from within the hallway, and despite the lack of light in the cell, Hollister shoots upward, gaze fixed on the gaps between jail-bars, and snaps right back:
"I said I will return! And when I do, I am going to drain all of you dry, you hear me? Every last drop of blood from your worthless bodies will be mine to devour! I will not die in the Games, no matter how badly you humans wish me gone, I will return, and I will slake my fucking thirst, do you hear me? Do you?"
(It's been too long since I've tasted blood.)
(But it won't be much longer before I can finally feast.)
A/N: Sarcastrophe by Slipknot.
So… Lethe and Hollister, and boy are they a fun pair. A big thank you to Momo and Nell for sending these boys in. Hopefully I wrote them well for you - I've certainly taken my share of creative liberties, but ideally they're not too out of place for what you had in mind. I'm beyond excited to be writing this amazing cast, and I cannot wait to move through these intros and give y'all a taste of all the horror that's in store, as this year will certainly not be one to forget. Until the next, dear readers!