III.

Meris Loucare, 17
Applicant #15

She really hadn't wanted this to be a big deal.

When you lived with as many people as she did everything was a big deal, point blank. If you went to the store someone wanted to know about it. She knew that was only the case because any and all of their housemates liked to add to their ever-growing grocery list at the slightest opportunity to do so. Anything to get out of the duty of carrying it all back.

There's a lot of reasons why she wakes up even earlier than necessary, in order to re-check all of her bags and get out of the house. At this hour everyone will still be asleep except for Lyan, who left at least forty-five minutes ago for an early workday, but she said a worthy goodbye to her brother last night, even if he was too tired to really understand a word she was saying.

But everyone else may as well be dead to the world. Ezben won't be joining her brother at Nine's newest construction site until noon, which means he'll be asleep until five minutes before then. Ty and Ophelia will be down at the processing plant by eleven. Nora will be up in twenty minutes, tops, which means she has about fifteen to make her get-away.

She creeps very quietly past Cass' room, even though the only other girl still in her teens under this roof wouldn't hear her anyway.

She likes these people. She does. But they're more her brother's friends than hers. There's a reason they spent their first few weeks in Nine couch-surfing, virtually homeless, and it was because she had to give Lyan some time to make some friends. And make friends he had. It still wasn't the ideal situation - the house was ramshackle at best, and the ceiling in the bathroom leaked every-time it rained, but it was no worse than their situation had been in the Capitol. Sure, their friends houses back there had all been nicer, but it didn't change the fact that they had nowhere proper to live and hadn't since their mother died.

Everything is a big deal, when the walls are almost too small to hold so many people. When you live in a place like that, the urge to keep some things to yourselves only grow stronger. It's not like they had a working television anyway, at least not one that broadcast any important news, so no one knew she had been chosen. Hell, no one besides Lyan even knew she applied. Most of them hadn't really cared about the program anyway, and the ones who had did nothing but snark about it. That's all Ezben did - bitch about Capitol kids like he wasn't living with two of them.

She makes it to the kitchen unscathed, dragging her bag after her, and scribbles out a note on the first thing she finds, a scrap of napkin that she pins under Nora's unwashed coffee mug, still sitting out on the counter.

Got accepted to New Haven. Lyan knows. See you guys in a few days or so.

Nora would probably be pissed when she got back, but she had no right. If Nora really was upset it was only for one reason; that she couldn't apply herself and get the hell out of Nine like the both of them talked about so often. Meris had just gotten the chance to do it first, and she was taking it.

"Meris?" Tekla asks blearily.

She nearly jumps, like Nora woke up with burning ears and crept up on her, but thankfully she's spared of that. Tekla's nearly concealed by the kitchen table, short as she is, rubbing weakly at her eyes.

"What are you doing up, kiddo?" she asks. She leaves her bag in the kitchen and scoops the girl up into her arms, heading back to her room.

"Thought you were mommy."

"Nope, definitely not. Mommy's still asleep, so you're gonna go back to sleep too."

Tekla's never been much of a fighter, and Meris worries for that. She doesn't protest when Meris carries her back to her room and tucks her back into bed.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Yeah. Don't tell anyone though - our secret."

Tekla nods, a little smile growing on her face. Their secret, and hers and Lyan's, and soon the whole household, once Nora wakes up. Surely someone will explain it to Tekla then, in more detail, but for now a three year old needs nothing more than to go back to sleep so that her parents can get another hour in, before they're required to face the day.

This really isn't perfect. There's not enough room, and Ty and Ophelia try to juggle a three year old with simultaneous twelve hour work days. You'd think everything would be getting better, Capitol kid or not.

Tekla drifts off back to sleep, though, like there's not a problem in the world. One day she'll grow up and realize the truth of it all, but now Meris is grateful that there's at least one person here not fighting to get the hell out. The Capitol really wasn't any better towards the end of their lives there, but her gut told her as soon as they got to Nine that it was wrong, and that leaving felt more right.

She shuts the door to Tekla's room and hurries back to her things. There's no telling how much time she has left, and she doesn't think she should push it more than she already has.

She's been given an opportunity. A secret.

And no matter what it is it's much, much better than being here.

Myra Callaghan-Alistair, 18
Applicant #5

The burn of the needle has become a familiar thing.

Or maybe the real reason it's so familiar is because of how Lorcan moves it, the same way he has for the past two years. Back then was the time when any official registered shop would require the signature of a guardian, and presented ID, but in this place the open sign goes off, and Lorcan goes on.

That's not to say Myra has gone out of her way to rebel against the people who raised her half her life; it's just the thrill of it. Of going in the back door and sitting down in the chair and letting one of her best friends put some new artwork all over her body like it was meant to be there. It's a lucky thing, that she trusts Lorcan most days more than she trusts herself, or she'd never let him do it.

She's got things - a lot of things. But this is Lorcan's, and it's his only one.

She's a writer. He's the artist.

"I'm just gonna scribble down your arm if you don't keep still," he says, in the middle of her writing a name down. She lets the pen cap fall out of her mouth.

"Don't say that."

"I'm serious."

"Bullshit, I'd make sure no one ever came in this place again."

"What happened to all art is beautiful to someone?"

"A jagged line down my arm is not art."

Lorcan smirks, and continues on with his shading. She's never had an easy time sitting still during these sessions; the real truth of the matter is that only Lorcan would be willing to pause and break for her fidgeting, for her never-ending energy. It's a wonder she made it through the ink all the way down her back, no matter how many sessions it took. She had still wanted to scream by the end of it, and not because of the pain.

"I've got twenty-two."

"Well, you're missing yourself."

"Thanks, genius. I can't remember who the last person is."

"Why does it matter, Myra?" he asks, sounding genuinely curiously. "You're going to meet all the other kids they chose in two days."

It matters to her. She wants all the names. She wants all the information she can possibly gather, and Lorcan's crappy little television in the corner of the studio had replayed the announcement over a dozen times since she sat down, and she's still missing one. That name is probably the most important one, someone who wants nothing more than to share their experiences with her, who wants them written down like she so wants to do. Writing is her thing. History, the past - that's all her thing. And she loves it.

"Help me with my book."

"Solid pass."

"Oh, c'mon."

"If I wanted to write a biography about my life and experiences during the rebellion and after, then I'd do it."

"That would be an autobiography, not a biography."

He gives her a look, and she feels as if his temptation to scribble down her arm with the needle is growing stronger by the second. Clearly she doesn't fit the typical definition of writer. Lorcan would tell her she's never been quiet a day in her life. Her uncle reads her notes over her shoulder and says interesting, nothing else. She only probably got permission to apply to the Program because he wanted to stop hearing about it all the time. The best way to do that was to let her go, to let her experience it, and then to hope it stopped.

Jokes on him.

It feels like they made this Program with her in mind. No one else understands that, except for the twenty-three other people they happened to choose. She's hoping they get it, in a way no one else does. Maybe they won't be activists, or hopeful historians, but they'll get it.

"Alright, we're done," Lorcan announces, and pulls away from her shoulder. The black and gray bird there is finally done, and her skin is only slightly reddened. It appears that all of her, tattooed or not, has gotten used to the burn as well.

"Beautiful as always," she tells him, and he offers a cheerful salute. "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing. You're good."

"Seriously?"

"Considering it a congratulations present. Or a going away present. Whatever you like better."

She vaults off the chair, loses both the pen and the pen cap in the process, and leans forward to hug him. He tries to pull away, like always, grunting in surprise. That's about the usual reaction she gets for such a sudden hug, but he deserves it. It's not like she ever really pays full price anyway, not with Lorcan, but it's still touching all the same.

"You're the best."

"Oh, I'm aware," he says with a grin. "Now let me wrap it before you fuck up all my hard work."

At least he's always careful. That's something she's definitely not, and he makes sure to tell her every other day. She feels like she could leap into this head-first and not care at all. She's been packed since an hour after she found out. If they offered to come pick her up right now, directly from the tattoo parlor, then she'd already be outside. It doesn't even matter where they take her, at this point. She's more than ready. She feels like she was born for it.

Lorcan holds the back door open for her as she steps out into the alleyway, arm squeaking in it's new plastic coat. "Try not to get into too much trouble, hey?"

"What, me?" she asks in mock offense, bringing her wrapped arm up to press over her heart. "Never."

Nicator Selton, 17
Applicant #14

He really likes to pride himself on not making rash, insane decisions.

Okay, maybe not insane. Slightly thoughtless, perhaps. It's not like he's about to go burn down an entire city block. The opposite, really. Just walk down one all casual, pulling his bag alongside him, to an address that he didn't have three days ago, from a source that was definitely not any of the people who live there.

And him and Percy hadn't really... talked about this. At all. It was mentioned, of course - you spend enough time in several classes with someone, the things you have in common come up. He knew Percy had applied, but he hadn't thought anyone he knew would have gotten chosen alongside him. He didn't recognize any of the other names from the Capitol, after all.

He didn't know when the idea had finally struck him, but it had ended with him making a trip down to Ms. Yarven's office on his free period, to ask her for Percy's address. It was a running joke between all of his friends, how much everyone in the administration office liked him, but even then he hadn't expected her to actually hand it over so willingly. She hadn't even asked why either, just went digging through her folders until she had produced it for him.

It didn't technically end like that, though. It ends right now, with him walking up to Percy's front door like he had been invited.

He knocks, holding his breath so tightly that he'll be blue in the face by the time anyone bothers to answer. He hears the approaching footsteps and is somehow still surprised when the door cracks open, a woman peering at him from the other side.

"Hello?"

"Hi," he responds. "I, uh— is Percy here?"

Of course Percy's here, is he an imbecile? Apparently. Nic gave himself plenty of time to walk down here, more than enough to get the both of them to the bus before it's scheduled to leave. He wasn't about to hold anyone up.

The woman's voice booms so loudly when she calls for Percy, up the stairs, he almost jumps and drops his bags. All of this just because he didn't want to walk down there alone, have to meet the others with them all staring at him and him alone. Percy will be a nice distraction, for him and for everyone. A distraction is exactly what he needs right now to keep himself from becoming even more jittery; the fact that they chose someone like little old him in the first place still seems like a miracle. He's no more special than anyone else.

Percy launches himself down the last of the stairs and hits the ground with a thud. His eyes widen at the sight of Nic standing in his doorway, like anyone's would.

He really should've just asked him.

"Why are you here?"

Nic tries not to let his face fall. "I should've just asked you in class, I know, given you some warning or something, but I was just wondering if you wanted to walk down to the station with me? It's not that far, and I just really don't want to go alone. You don't have to, though. I can go by myself."

His nervous laughter is so pathetic it almost hurts him physically.

"Oh," Percy says. "I was gonna get my moms to drive me, but—"

"That's fine," he says in a rush. "Like I said, I can walk down there myself, it's no big deal."

"No, no. I'll come with you. Just give me a few minutes, hey?"

He's already nodding, and Percy takes off so fast he blinks and almost misses his departure. There's a lot of thudding and shouting, more than he would expect from any other household so early in the morning. He catches a quick glimpse of Percy trying to wheel himself away from one of his mother's reaching hands, and when he finally tugs himself free he drops two bags at Nic's feet by the door and vaults back for the stairs so quickly Nic waits for him to go crashing into them. That's one way to prematurely end this trip.

He knows what most people say about Percy, but he's not thinking about that when he picks his backpack up off the floor and shoulders it. Most people can't stand him. He's loud and annoying, impossible to get along with at the worst of times. Nic's always had trouble seeing him that way. To be frank, he has trouble seeing anyone that way.

Percy finally returns to the door, hurriedly stuffing his feet into a pair of shoes and grabbing at a jacket hanging off the back of the door. "You don't have to carry my stuff."

Nic shrugs, and refuses to let it drop to the floor. Percy smiles at that, and gives a massive heave to the remaining bag on the floor, tugging it frantically across the threshold and onto the front porch.

"Love you!" he calls back into the house, and slams the door shut before anyone can respond. Everything feels a little too urgent, too frantic. He pauses while Percy struggles with his bag, finally righting it properly on the concrete. Percy finally looks up at him, and he smiles.

"You ready?" he asks.

"Not at all," Nic responds. He's excited, don't get him wrong. More excited than he can every remember being. He just hopes all of this goes smoothly, that he gets along with everyone, that there's no cause for drama. He wants to do this, and he wants to take it all in. "What about you?"

Percy seems to consider that, for several long seconds. He finally manages to wipe the smile off his face, the smile that Nic still hasn't fully wrapped his brain around.

"Born ready. Let's go."

Meliodas Vergara, 18
Applicant #18

"What are you still doing here?" he asks blearily, blinking in the too-bright lights from the kitchen.

His father hardly looked up from whatever he was stirring in the skillet. "Thought I would give you a proper send-off. Make you some breakfast. Do you have a problem with that?"

No, he didn't. He would never have a problem with someone making him breakfast. It's just that he was pretty convinced his father had a meeting this morning, which would have meant he left the house even earlier than he normally did.

"I postponed it," he continues, ever the mind reader. "They understood. It's not every-day you have to send your son off to some unknown location."

There's something passive-aggressive about that, but Mel's been hearing it ever since the announcement was made. His father doesn't get it. Never will, if he's being honest. There's no understanding towards his desire to know more, to see more. His father is quite content where they are now; he's spent two years working himself up in the business bureaus in One. Mel can't say he blames him.

But his father doesn't care about what people think of him. If he cared, his hair wouldn't still be the same shade of black, reflected blue back in the sunlight.

There's a reason Meliodas stopped dyeing his hair, let the semi-permanent tattoos fade. He still remembered the looks he had gotten when they first moved here. It wasn't very much open disdain, not in One. No, it was harder to place than that. It was open, undisguised curiosity, like he was a creature at the zoo. For a while he had been able to embrace that, being the lion watching all the little ants scurry around him.

But that wasn't how it worked anymore.

"You don't have to make it sound so dangerous, dad," he settles on eventually. "I think it'll be cool. Hopefully when I get back I'll be able to tell you all sorts of things. Maybe we can even go visit a few spots, or something."

Unlikely, but Mel can hope.

"You sound like your mother."

His lips quirk up, both at that and the plate of pancakes his father places in front of him. They look a little charred around the edges, but he's going to keep his mouth shut. His mother was a better cook than this. Still is. Whenever she passes through One she always makes sure to bring him something, and he's not exactly sure who's kitchens she keeps on borrowing, but it seems better each and every time.

He misses her. There's a reason he moved to One with his father. Sixteen year olds couldn't very well go around traversing the country with only one parent, least of all not one who couldn't always make time for him. She still sends him photographs almost every week, from places increasingly more unfamiliar. He still gets the newspapers she's published in sent all the way from the Capitol, every issue.

"Do you think that's a bad thing?" he asks.

"No, of course not. It's just that not everyone can make a career out of gallivanting across the country doing something they love, and I hope you see that. You never used to be like this. I had to force you to sit down and watch the Games with me when you were younger."

He never understood the fanfare. The desire. The way the people around him would cheer - they sounded like killers themselves, something Meliodas knew he could never be.

But it's like he said; that had all changed. They had moved, and he had realized everything he thought he knew about the Capitol and their Games, none of it really mattered to the people here.

It was in times like these that his mind always wandered back to Cadence Fifer. She was everything he imagined when they had first moved here, everything a One should be. Tall, beautiful, displaying a kindness that he was so sure only masked the hurt and dismay she still carried from the death of her much older brother in the 159th. It had been so long ago that he hardly had any recollection of it, and could hardly remember what he had said to her when he had finally worked up the courage to say it.

He definitely couldn't recall what he had said, nervous as he was and struggling to hide it, but he remembers her voice.

"Second's as bad as twenty-fourth," she had said, plain as day, shrugging so high her shoulders nearly touched her ears. "It didn't matter much to me either way."

There was no hurt to be hidden, only shame. Disdain. A lack of love for someone that had died for his District, or really nothing at all.

A lot of things had changed that day. Both for him, and for her. She still looked at him as they passed in the halls, sometimes, but she hadn't spoken a word to him since then, and he hadn't pushed it.

He didn't understand it then, and he still didn't. But he wanted to.

His father reached forward to tap the edge of his plate. "Not going to eat?"

He looked down at the pancakes, struggling to keep his face blank. They were even more burnt than he had realized.

"No offense dad," he said calmly. "These look terrible."

His father sighed and pulled the plate away, dumping its contents into the garbage with a thunk. "Go get dressed, then. You're going to be late."

Early, judging by the clock, but he wasn't going to say otherwise. There were a lot of things he didn't say to his father, in order to keep the peace between them. His father wouldn't understand, not ever, and maybe that was just how the world worked sometimes. If Meliodas thought he could change that, he would say something. Something about how different they had become, how while Mel struggled with his own knowledge his father struggled to keep his relationship with the widowed jeweler down the street intact.

There was nothing wrong with Allegra, not really. But there was nothing right about her either.

Mel would never say that out-loud. He may not have the best understanding with his father, but it could certainly be worse. He wasn't about to drive a dagger through the heart of one of the only constant relationships he had.

It's like he said - he wasn't a killer.

Halfway done intros and that's about all I have to say, tbh. No clue how to write notes anymore. Let me know what you thought of this batch as always!

Until next time.