A/N: Sorry for the delay! It turned out I was busier than I'd expected, so I didn't get this finished as soon as I'd hoped. Still, here it is, and hopefully it meets your expectations. :p
4 - When They Took The Roll Call
The stage in District Seven is set up in a large clearing in the woods; the light that filters down from the bright sky is mottled with shifting shadows from the trees. Dressed in bright scarlet, Emalia Silverstone stands out like a cardinal among the greens and browns of the leafy District.
Her voice is loud and clear, almost painfully shrill, as she expounds on how glad she is to be here – just like the rest – and how grateful she is to the Mayor for her wonderful speech on the history of Panem – just like the rest – and how utterly enraptured and excited she is by the Reapings this year. Just like the rest. Unlike the rest, though, she doesn't seem to be making an enormous effort to hide how un-excited she actually is; her voice is expressive, her movements are bright and cheerful, but she looks unbelievably bored. Or maybe that's just because her eyelids are made heavy by the insanely long eyelashes affixed to them.
Her long-nailed fingers dig in the girls' Reaping ball as she speaks, and at last, she smiles brightly and pulls out a scrap of paper.
"Silvia Stone!"
She tenses, worn-down nails digging into the palms of her hands as she clenches, then unclenches, her thick fists. Here, now, it seems suddenly too scary to go through with. But she's watched enough Reapings and enough Games to know what she has to do, and she doesn't have a choice.
"I volunteer," she croaks out, and then, when it comes out strangled and quiet, raises her voice and shouts out again – loud this time, a roar - "I volunteer!"
Heads turn. She isn't hard to see; tall and solidly-built, she's a head above most of the other seventeen-year-old girls, and already pushing her way forwards towards the stage. Silvia, a frail-looking fourteen-year-old, drops back among her peers with obvious relief, but Yariminda isn't looking. Instead, she stares straight ahead as she climbs the steps onto the unvarnished wood of the stage, her head held high and her mouth drawn into a hard line.
Somewhere out in the crowd, her siblings will be horrified. But she can't let that faze her. She's doing this for them, after all; the Games will save them, because that's all the Games are good for. Fame, wealth, privilege... the Games will bring them all of that if she wins, and if she loses, then at least there's one fewer mouth to feed. Besides, even before the Games, the Capitol will provide for her, and the thought of three square meals a day might almost be incentive enough on its own.
Emalia is asking her name. Yariminda meets her eyes levelly, unsmiling. "Yariminda Birchwood," she replies, and shakes Emalia's hand firmly, ignoring the dig of overlong nails into her skin. Aware of the glare of the cameras, and of the importance of keeping up a good impression, she keeps her head high and her hands loose by her sides as she steps to the back of the stage. The easiest part is keeping a straight face. There's nothing to cry about, after all, and she has no temptation to smile.
Emalia's smile looks much more genuine now. The excitement of having a volunteer right at the start seems to have cured her of her boredom, and she all but skips up to the boy's Reaping ball, digging her hand in deep.
"Well, isn't this exciting?" she exclaims, her teeth flashing brightly as her ridiculous eyelashes make another long sweep; down, up, like a bird's wing. "And our second tribute, everybody, let's hear it for..." There's a moment where she struggles slightly to unfold the paper, inch-long nails clicking together oddly, before she reads the name. "Alexander Pine!"
The silence is audible. After Yariminda's dramatic entrance, everyone – including Emalia, clearly – is half-expecting another volunteer. Teddy certainly is, although that's more desperate hope than real expectation. He doesn't want to go. Not to the Games, not him, certainly not now. Crazily, the thought that comes into his head is All that rehearsal's been a waste. I'll never get to be in the musical now.
Nobody seems to be making a move, least of all him. It's hard to wrap his head around. In some ways, he guesses it could be worse... after all, what are the Games if not a giant stage where you have to act all the time? And he can act. He knows he can. After all, that's what he does with his life...
Mac gives him a little shove, for once not smiling, and Teddy realises that he's been standing there way too long already, that the Peacekeepers are coming into the stockade to pull him up onto the stage, and that nobody is going to volunteer for him. Hot on the heels of that realisation comes a resolution: all right, there's a stage... stages are easy. Stages are natural. You know what to do, now do it.
He lifts his head up, puts on a smile, and goes out to meet the Peacekeepers, thin arms swinging loosely by his sides as if this were the most normal thing in the world to him. He makes it look easy, makes it look casual, as if nothing about this situation can touch him. Courage is something he's acted a million times before, and he pulls it over himself like a cloak, hopping up onto the stage with a smile at Emalia, and another to Yariminda, whose neutrality has for some reason dropped in favour of a vicious glare in his direction. At the back of his mind, that worries him, but the Teddy who is brave, the Teddy who the cameras see, is completely unfussed. He shakes Emalia's hand, trying to add a certain firmness to the motion, and steps back to join Yariminda.
He's uncomfortably aware of how she towers over him, and of the fact that he's going to his death. But he's on a stage, and the crowd is watching and applauding, and the cameras are on him, and that makes it all too easy to play the part.
The Mayor steps up to take Emalia's place, and as she reads the Treaty, Yariminda continues to glare at Alexander, her green eyes dark and hard as glass. To the undoubted interest of many in the Capitol, he seems to remain completely untroubled by it.
They're an oddly-matched pair of tributes, and it shows all the more when the Mayor finishes her reading and the two shake hands. Yariminda towers head and shoulders over Alexander, and has to reach down to take his hand. Everything about her is big – big frizz of hair; big, broad shoulders and muscular arms; big nose; big mouth; big hands that swamp Alexander's as she tightens her hand on his, so tightly that he's obviously struggling not to wince. By contrast, he looks small and weedy; he's sixteen, only a year younger than her, but small for his age, with scraggly black hair and a round, childlike face. He disappears beside her, but his courage has been noted, and that counts for something.
Again, the anthem strikes up, and again, the cameras move on – taking in, as they pass, Emalia's returning expression of boredom, Yariminda's glare, Alexander's cocky smile, and the relieved expressions of the children whose names have yet to be called – and turn away from the leafy openness of Seven, to the claustrophobic, urban grey of Eight, where the Mayor stands up to speak. He speaks fast, unceasingly, and so it isn't long before the Representative, Netta Levy, steps up to take his place. She's tall and willowy, and after the rushed speechifying of the Mayor, she seems remarkably steady. She speaks, more briefly than the others, about how glad she is to be there, and then falls silent as her hand dips deliberately into the first ball of names, pulling out the first Tribute of District Eight:
"Lacey Fuller!"
She swears. Luckily, she manages to bite back the actual swearing, but in her head, she swears the sky blue. Me? Why me? Her name can't be in there more than ten or fifteen times – she's taken out tesserae, but not that many. It doesn't seem fair. No, scratch that, it doesn't seem possible. Being Reaped, going to the Games... those are things that happen to someone else.
But they're happening to her. They're happening to her, and she can see herself on the vast screens above the stage, caught in a moment of shock, brown eyes bigger than ever and mouth hanging slightly open, and she has to fix that, has to make herself look strong, for her family if not for the Capitol. She has to make herself confident, and fast, before that first impression is what sinks in across the whole of Panem, and especially in Lyle's eyes. Lyle's watching back home, in bed like always, excused from the Reaping because of his illness; she has to be strong for him. He can't know his big sister's terrified.
So Lacey closes her mouth, and closes her eyes for a moment, and balls her fists briefly at her sides as she starts up to the stage. She can't quite manage a smile – she's not a good enough actress for that – but a glance at the screens shows her that it's good enough; she looks calm now, confident, her curly auburn hair swinging against her cheeks as she strides up the steps, even managing a little swagger in her step.
After all, she tells herself, maybe it's not that bad. She might not be the best Tribute ever to be Reaped, but she's fast, she's brave, she's a quick learner... if she puts her mind to it, she could actually have a chance. And think about it, whispers the part of her brain she's almost afraid to acknowledge right now, because it's just too hopeful, if you win, you'll be rich. You'll be rich and you'll be in touch with the Capitol. Who knows, maybe you could even find out what's wrong with Lyle.
As she shakes Netta's gloved hand and steps back, the applause roaring in her ears, she finally manages to summon a smile.
"Isn't this a marvellous start?" Netta encourages, joining in the applause. "Lacey, you should be very, very proud. May the odds be ever in your favour!" She smiles directly at the cameras, a hundred-watt smile which certainly seems to reach her electric-blue eyes, and dips her hand into the other ball, eyes still on the audience. She never seems to blink.
There's a certain gravitas to her unfolding of the paper, which has been lacking in the other Representatives. She holds it up in one hand, tucking back a strand of her long, dark hair with the other. "Aaron Duty!"
"Clark," he mutters, before it really starts to sink in. His name's Clark, not Aaron. Everyone knows that, but the stupid Capitol don't seem to realise that names can change, and the name on his slip is still the one he was born with. A moment later, he's wondering why on earth that seems like it would matter – why, when he's marching to his death, he even cares. It's a slow realisation, but a terrifying one; this is it. He has to go. And, given the luck his family's had with risky tasks before, he doesn't think his chances of coming back are all that high. Another one bites the dust.
It takes a moment's eye contact with Sam, his twin, to sink through his miasma of fear and remind him: we've planned for this. There is a plan. They worked it out years ago, and if he's going to be in with any sort of chance, he needs to stick to the plan. The strategy is simple, and he repeats it over and over again in his head as he walks up to the stage, like a mantra: Be stupid. Be stupid, be weak, don't be a threat. Being threatening is a good way to get yourself killed in the Games. Instead, he needs to be stupid, and be forgettable – it won't get him sponsors, but it might let him slip under the radar, and that could save his life.
He stumbles slightly as he gets up on the stage. Partly, that's because he's still thinking be stupid be clumsy be weak don't be a threat, but it's also because he's terrified. His whole life is flashing before his eyes, and the future part of it looks horribly short. Fourteen years old, small and weak and from an urban District, with no training and no survival skills... he has a strategy, though. That's important. That's a start.
"They call me Clark," he tells Netta, his voice quavering just a little bit.
She arches one elegant eyebrow, studded along its length with little silver balls, and shakes his hand. "Clark," she repeats, slowly, with a smile to the cameras. "Well, Clark, congratulations. Welcome to the Hunger Games!"
The applause is too loud, and sounds too distant. He keeps his blue-green eyes fixed on his feet, stepping back to join Lacey. Be stupid. Be clumsy. Be weak. Be scared.
The last one, at least, is easy.
The Mayor steps up again, a tall, bony silhouette at the front of the stage, to read the Treaty. Again, he speaks rapidly, words tripping over each other as they hurry out of his mouth. The cameras focus on him, then shift to the tributes, both small for their age, but otherwise entirely different. Lacey seems to have extremely strong control of herself, while Clark shifts awkwardly from foot to foot, blinking up at the stage lights; when they come together to shake hands, she smiles at him, and he just looks back up at her, slightly slack-jawed.
At the back of the stage, Netta smiles, too, her gloved hands clasped together behind her back. The Mayor steps back, and the mentors rise as the anthem strikes up. The camera takes a long, slow sweep over the square, cramped and narrow between the towering factories, and then moves onwards, ever onwards, and the Capitol leave District Eight behind.