Author's note: I've realised two things about this story. One, the chapters are going to be pretty big. Two, there are going to be a lot of chapters. Oops.
Please bear with me and keep reading/reviewing. I love you all very much!
John couldn't remember his escort's name. It was a ridiculous thing to be concerned about, but it worried him all the same. He didn't need any more help in appearing stupid. He tried to surreptitiously read the name badge stuck onto the man's sparkling tunic, but to no avail. John turned instead to stare out the train window, but found himself distracted by the tiny circles of light thrown off by all the sequins. Sequins… sequins, sparkle, glitter- the cogs slowly clunked into place. Glamor! His name was glamor. The man who had been grudgingly assigned to District Twelve. He looked so bored that John wondered if he was still awake.
"Glamor?" John asked tentatively. Glamor grunted. "What happens now? What do we do?"
"Whatever you want." Glamor waved his arm around vaguely. "Everything's at your disposal. Just be ready for supper in an hour." John nodded, and stood up from the plush seat. He smiled an apologetic goodbye at Molly, before retreating to the solitude of his own compartment. He felt guilty for leaving her, but he wanted to be by himself.
He had meant to take this time to consider strategies or at least let himself think things through, but he found his feelings locked, unreachable. He was holding together for now, so he decided not to push it. Instead he wandered around the room, feeling the floor sway under his feet and trying out the various Capitol gadgets. The shower was magical. He ended up sat on the cold tiles, leaning back against the wall and letting water rain down on him. He spent a long time pressing button after button, feeling the spray switch from ice cold to scalding in seconds. It was soothing in a numbing kind of way.
John was pulling on his shoes when Glamor appeared and gestured wordlessly, not looking up from his clipboard. Obediently, he followed the man to the dining room. Molly sat with her back to the door, but when John entered she twisted around to smile at him. John took a seat next to her, letting himself be reassured by the familiar face.
"Is it just us?" Molly asked as Glamor took a seat near the end of the table, far away from them.
"Yeah. In most places, it's the tributes, the escort and the previous victors. But as your district doesn't have any..."
"We had one!" Molly exclaimed. "Liva. From the fifty-ninth Games?" Glamor snorted, and looked away. Liva had died ten years ago, when John was too young to really comprehend the significance. She remained District 12's only victor- a severe alcoholic who died of liver damage at twenty-two. She had been a sad, damaged woman. She didn't even register for Glamor.
"So who's going to control our sponsorship in the arena?" John asked. He'd never really given it any thought- District 12 could rarely afford to sponsor anybody, so it made little difference.
"That'll be me," Glamor sighed heavily. He seemed relieved when the first course arrived and they didn't have to try and converse anymore. John didn't really notice- he was in a different world. He had never tasted anything like this- cheese and chocolate and fruit. At first it was pure bliss, course after course of rich, delicious food filling his stomach for what felt like the first time. It was only when he reached for another bread roll and caught a glimpse of the strip of rag tied around his wrist that his stomach flipped.
From then on, every bite was laced with the bitter taste of guilt. How many children could a meal like this have fed? For how long? John didn't want to think about the answers. He chewed and swallowed every morsel anyway, driven by the overwhelming compulsion to eat everything in sight. It was a side effect of starvation he knew only too well.
After the meal, the three of them trudged into another compartment to watch the summary of the reapings. John remained silent, but drummed his fingers against his leg in anxiety. Images of armies swarmed his brain- burly eighteen year olds, women and men with years of food and fighting under their belts. What were him and Molly next to them? He glimpsed their reflection in the television screen. Insipid, scrawny. Pathetic.
District One didn't fail to disappoint- an eighteen year old woman, a sixteen year old boy. Names that didn't stick in John's head. Sleek black hair on both, looks of determination and… amusement? He was wary already.
Two presented an enormous male tribute, taller than anybody John had ever seen before. He didn't even seem real. He towered over the stocky female tribute. Three's pair were forgettable in comparison.
The youngest tribute came from District 4- a boy, only twelve years old. The girl was sixteen. They were both blonde and they both looked terrified. John had heard that Four trained their children for the Games, but nothing would convince him that the two he saw on screen were anymore prepared for this than he was.
John gave up trying to keep track after that. It was only when the male tribute for District Eight stepped up that John's attention was grabbed. He didn't quite know why. Maybe it was the long coat, made of a material John didn't recognise, or the striking dark hair on pale skin. Whatever this tribute was, he was something else.
He watched himself and Molly be called, and then the broadcast was over. He frowned. Twenty-four tributes and he'd already forgotten most. There had been the sly looking pair from One… the huge boy from two… the young boy from Four and a girl of only thirteen from Nine. And of course, the boy from Eight. Was 'boy' the right word? John had no idea how to refer to him. He remembered reading that the tribute was seventeen years old, but something about him made him seem much older. John wished that he'd remembered the name instead.
He dismissed himself without being told to and padded quietly back to his temporary refuge. He felt sick from the meal and from the recap, but he had to try and sleep if nothing else. Tomorrow would be a big day, and he needed every advantage he could get.
"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Karyn fussed. "It's going to be a very busy day."
"I know."
"Not even a bit of fruit?" she tried.
"Digesting slows me down." The escort seemed to give up, switching her attention to the female tribute's hair. Sherlock was glad. Serra seemed to be much better at putting up with unwanted attention than he was.
They'd be at the Capitol soon, judging by his calculations. He hadn't slept, but he hadn't tried. Sleep had seemed a waste of time. There were so many things he'd never seen before, so many mechanisms he had yet to understand. How many chances would a person like him get to investigate a train like this? He hadn't even watched the reapings- he had excused himself under the guise of illness and explored all kinds of exciting places instead.
They began to slow down as they approached the station. Trying to read the people he saw flick past was incredible. They were so unlike anybody he'd seen before, all bright colours and harsh angles. He caught occasional glimpses of understanding- recently married, journalist, three cats- but they were fleeting and strangely reminiscent of groping for his coat in the dark. The train slid to a smooth halt and Sherlock was shepherded out into the hallway where Serra and their team stood waiting. He stiffened when he saw the mass of people outside. Clutching cameras and microphones, they banged on the glass, crowded at the door, making wild gestures and mouthing words he couldn't read.
Karyn's hand came down on his shoulder firmly. "Oh sweetheart, don't worry about them. They only want to love you!"
"I can't imagine a worse thing." The idea of a lamb walking into a lion's den came to mind. She tittered at him, and gave him a not all-that-gentle nudge.
"Off you pop!"
"No," he said flatly.
"Go on dear, out you go."
"No, I don't see that happening."
"Oh, for-," Karyn cut herself off, breathing out heavily through pursed lips.
"Enough." Sherlock's mentor, a lean and quiet man named Rook, had materialised out of nowhere. He grabbed something off of a nearby coat stand and threw it to him. "Here. Hide your face if it's going to bother you that much." Sherlock examined the strange hat- he recognised the material as twill, but he didn't understand why it had to have two flaps. All the same, he pulled it on and strode out into the crowds, head down.
The pestering didn't end there. They fawned over him in the Remake Centre. He was keen to observe them, but after exactly forty-eight seconds he decided it wasn't worth it and zoned out. He thought of other, more interesting things as they dragged combs through his hair, smothered him in sweet smelling lotions and attacked his eyebrows with tweezers. It could have been five minutes or five hours when a call of his name brought him back to the surface.
"We're done!" one of the women chirruped. "Now off the table and we'll get your stylist in!" Sherlock pulled at the white sheet they'd given him, cloaking his body in it and sitting up to wait. His stylist. How trivial.
He supposed District Eight was lucky, in a way. With a main export was fabric, costumes were easy to create and rarely that humiliating. The only district stylists preferred to Eight was One, where they could drip their tributes in diamonds and glitter. The least favoured district certainly seemed to be Twelve. Some vindictive part of him smirked at memories of previous years. If tributes from District 12 were unlucky, they tended to end up naked, covered in coal dust.
"As it was such a hit before, we'd planned to have you naked, covered in coal dust."
John heard Molly let out a kind of squeak by his side, but hung onto hope. Past tense was always a good sign with this kind of thing. "Are you still doing that?"
"No," the stylist sighed heavily. He sounded as if somebody had stamped on his puppy. "There were complaints from the cleaners, so we've been advised to take a different route." John offered a silent thank you to every single cleaner involved.
"What are we wearing instead?" Molly asked.
"Oh, some boring old doctored miner's outfits. But I'm sure you'll make them work," the man said doubtfully.
A few hours later, John found himself climbing onto a plain black chariot. He didn't want to watch the other districts dazzle and shine, so he kept his eyes fixed on the ground. But he couldn't block his ears, and his heart sunk with each fresh round of applause. What slight hopes he'd held of ever returning home were dwindling.
"Hey, could you give me a hand?" he heard Molly ask. He turned around to help her onto the chariot, and stopped dead. She smiled weakly when she saw his face.
"I know, right? It's very… pretty." The dress was gold and tiny, skating the tops of her thighs. "They put a lot of effort in. It kept falling down at first. They had to use a special kind of glue, but they got it to stick eventually." They had somehow made the material press tightly against her, and it created an odd effect. The dress had been designed to cling to breasts and hips that Molly just didn't have. On a healthy woman, it might have been sexy. On her, it enunciated collarbones and shoulder blades.
They had paired it with a miner's hat, tilted at an angle that John supposed was supposed to be jaunty or playful. The dress, the makeup, the stilettos, the nail varnish, they all did the same thing. Despite the stylists' effort, Molly's entire outfit did nothing but reinforce who she was: a scared sixteen year old girl. A child.
"Twelve? Twelve, you need to go now!" a frantic voice came. The chariot jerked into motion, and John gripped at the side to balance himself. Steadied, he straightened up and stared ahead. What did he do with his face? Did he look happy? Sad? He somehow doubted he could pull of fierce and intimidating. The crowd were too loud and he couldn't think straight and he ended up doing some strange weak half-smile, still trying to concentrate on not wobbling or being sick or falling off the chariot. He and Molly suddenly filled the huge television screen, and he was floored by how hideously pitiful they looked. He jerked violently as the chariot hit a rock, and as he tried to hang on Harry's words mocked him. John did not want to break his promise.
The blonde boy on the television stopped smiling. His face flickered. Catching sight of himself made John grit his teeth. He was not about to cry in front of the whole of Panem. He dug his nails into the flesh of his palm and looked straight ahead. The boy on the monitor held it together- back straight, eyes steely, control regained. The camera changed targets, but John didn't relax. The chariot was nearing its destination and the crowd was quietening down, but no relief came. He couldn't shake the feeling- no, the knowledge- that he just couldn't do this. He couldn't.
I'll live. You do the same.
John wanted to go home.
Greg felt a little overwhelmed. Floor Six of the training centre seemed to stretch before him, impossibly large. Was all of this really just for him and Sherry?
His room was filled with hundreds of unusual and exciting things, but all Greg felt was relief at being off the train. Whenever he shut his eyes, images of his father slammed into his vision. Greg had been eleven when he died- young enough to need him and old enough to know it. The train crash could probably have been prevented with better safety equipment, but there was no use dwelling on it. This rationality, whilst helpful, didn't stop his heart from racing or his hands from shaking.
Greg accepted the wine at dinner in the hopes it would calm his anxiety. It didn't, and he didn't like the taste, but he drunk it anyway so that he didn't appear rude. For a brief moment, he wondered why he was trying to be polite when he might not even be alive in a week's time. And it was all for the Capitol's entertainment. What could he possibly owe these people?
Deep guilt and even more anxiety tore through him. What was he doing, thinking like that? It could be considered treason! The Capitol did not let traitors off lightly- punishment usually involved those who the criminal loved the most. His mind flashed to his grandmother. They had so many expensive things here- what if they could hear thoughts? He was sure they couldn't, but the paranoia didn't fade and for the rest of the meal he made a conscious effort to only think nice things.
After they had eaten, they watched the replay of the opening ceremony. Greg watched District One's entrance and proceeded to forget everybody else's. It was quite difficult not to when the voluptuous woman stood on the chariot had opted (yes, opted, the announcer specified) to go completely nude. The slightly rat-faced boy by her side was covered by a glitzy toga-style item, for which Greg was more slightly glad.
He spent another hour or so with Sherry, but they had little in common and he wasn't offended when she left to go to bed early. He tried doing the same, but quickly realised that sleep wouldn't come easily. Instead he sat at the window, duvet wrapped around himself. In the distances, lights on buildings and cars flickered on and off, the world constantly moving.
He looked up to the sky, and found he could just about make out the stars. He sat up long into the night, gazing up into the darkness. It offered him a strange form of reassurance. The stars were much dimmer here than they were at home, but it was still the same sky. This was the same universe, even if it didn't feel that way.
Molly was already at the table when John appeared. "Good morning," she greeted him.
"Morning," he muttered, pulling back a chair. He looked exhausted. Molly wondered if he'd slept at all. A pang of guilt ripped at her. Even in the hardest times, Molly had never had any problems sleeping. Last night had been no different. She felt awful admitting it. It felt like it was a sign that she didn't love her family enough, that she was rotten inside.
Nobody seemed to be in much of a mood to talk. She tried to start a conversation a few times, but John was unresponsive and Glamor looked in pain whenever he was required to answer. She gave up and focused on systematically buttering rolls and eating them, not really tasting the food as it slid down her throat. She couldn't help but remember the footage of the other reapings. There had been so many boys and girls and women and men- most were heavier than she was, with more muscle and brainpower and experience.
When John met her eye, she still smiled enthusiastically. Within hours of being chosen, she had quietly accepted that she wouldn't be returning to District 12- so what was the point in making everybody miserable about it? She tried to focus on the good things. For instance, today they had let wear a tunic and leggings. Whilst the training tunic was a bit too tight for her liking, she felt much more comfortable than she had at the opening ceremony. They had let her keep the gold dress. She had crammed it down behind a chest of drawers to get it out of her sight. It hadn't worked. She still knew it was there, venom radiating out.
"Be ready for ten," Glamor announced as he finished his meal. He wandered off, leaving the two of them alone.
"Are you okay?" Molly asked gently. John looked up, his eyes tired.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yes, I'm fine. Well, not totally fine, I guess. I'm quite nervous about today but it can't go that badly, can it? I mean, I'm sure the people will be nice. Don't you think?"
"Does it matter?" John snapped. Molly jumped a little, and he sighed. "No, I'm sorry, Molls. That isn't fair. I'm sure you're right- it'll be okay."
"What's wrong, John?" she asked, concerned. "I won't tell Glamor, promise."
"Glamor wouldn't care if I told him I'd just given birth," John pointed out. Molly laughed out loud, and it made John smile. She felt good about that.
"No, it's okay, honestly. Just… lots of things to think about. People back home. People here." He broke off. "Some of those tributes looked terrifying. Did you see the guy from Two?"
"The really tall one?"
"Yeah, him."
"Maybe he'll be nice too?" Molly volunteered. John snorted.
"We'd better hope so."
"You sound like you've given up," she frowned.
"Maybe I have." Molly remembered meeting John. She had only been twelve, when somebody being a whole year older than her made a big impact. He seemed to know everything. As the years passed and they trained together, she learned more about him. It had seemed like he could take on anything and come out the other side, smiling and hopeful. He was an orphan who cared for his alcoholic sister- but he could still always find time to give Molly any help she needed. Molly thought of him a little like the brother she'd never had.
"That's not the John Watson I know," she said.
"Yeah, I'm not the John Watson you…" John trailed off. He twiddled with an old strip of fabric he had tied around his wrist. Even Molly could appreciate that he wanted to be left alone, so she excused herself and left him sat at the table.
It seemed like only seconds had passed when there was a loud knock on her door.
Ready?" Glamor asked. At least, Molly thought it was a question. Glamor seemed incapable of mastering more than one tone of voice.
"I'll be there in a second!" she called back sunnily. Molly's fingers were clumsy as she knotted her laces, conscious that she was holding everybody up. She finished and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She took a deep breath, then another. It'll be okay, she told herself. It'll be okay.
"Okay, I'm ready." She opened her eyes. It was time to meet the other tributes.
