.
THE FAREWELLS
(District 1, Luxury Goods)
He panicked, that's all. They'd already chosen the female tribute, and the lady from the Capitol was unfolding the paper and reading out the name, and he was looking around at all the other young Careers in his year shuffling their feet and eyeing each other, especially the massive thick-necked boy who was supposed to step forward formally after the token reading and announce himself as this year's volunteer, and suddenly the only thought in Flynn's mind was, I'm gonna die either way.
He's eighteen years old and he hasn't got any skills except what they taught him in the district foster center and at the factory. He can already imagine his entire short lifetime of assembling fiddly little jewelry, spooling out to its pitiful and premature end in his mind's eye. He's seen it before, kids too old to keep training at the center, filching and fencing product to survive until the Peacekeepers catch them and beat them boneless. If he doesn't get a broken rib kicked into his lungs, it'll be winter cold or chemical poisoning or plain old starvation, and nobody will miss him. Nobody will miss one parentless charity case with a knack for knives. Nobody has ever cared what happens to Flynn Rider, except himself.
And after this final fleeting chance to be useful, nobody will ever help him again.
"If anyone so chooses-"
The words burst out of him like a gunshot before the woman was finished reading. "I volunteer!" Heads whipped around to stare at him in shock. The guy whose position he'd stolen glared bloody-eyed murder at him, but if they let volunteers volunteer for volunteers, the reaping in District 1 would never be over.
The other prospective tributes jostled Flynn with their shoulders as he walked through them, but none of them dared wreck him right there and damage their district's chances in this year's Games.
There was a grin on Flynn's face that their anger and confusion couldn't wipe away as he mounted the stairs. He's going to look like ten tons of cocky dynamite on the recap reels, and he knows it. This is his trademark - he's always been the fastest into the fray, and out again before they know what hit 'em. He can win this. He can survive. He doesn't have to die inhaling chemical fumes in a dingy gray sweatshop.
He feels so good about the whole thing, in fact, that it barely hurts at all as he sits out his mandatory hour of farewells at City Hall. Alone, except for the echoes of an empty room.