A/N: Okay, so I am not back onto regular updates, because I am doing NaNoWriMo this year, so all my writing time is reserved for that. So this will probably be the last update until December - people who submitted to Districts 11 and 12, I am really sorry for making you wait this long, and I solemnly swear to get to it immediately after I'm done NaNo-ing. But I did feel bad about dropping the ball so much (seriously, over a month between updates, I am kicking myself!), so I got this chapter done before I start on NaNo. Hope it works for you! And happy Hallowe'en.
5 - The Words We Could Not Stand To Hear
Nine is wide and golden, the ears of ripening grain rustling softly in the afternoon breeze. After the dense urban air of Eight, its brightness and openness is all the more startling, and the cameras linger for a moment on the rolling amber hills, so foreign and rustically beautiful, as the Mayor speaks. He speaks slowly, nervously – a young man, this is his first year as Mayor – and glances often at the cameras, and when Lucrezia Bluefire takes the stage, he looks profoundly grateful to settle back into his own seat.
Lucrezia is tall and sharply, Classically beautiful, and when she takes the stage, there is an undeniable power to her presence. The effect, however, is lost when she speaks; her accent is trilling and light, of course, but her voice is also extremely high, even squeaky. She seems blissfully unaware of this fact, plunging ahead undaunted as she welcomes the crowds to the Reaping, batting her long black eyelashes coquettishly. She moves in tiny little steps, her skirt trailing along the stage, as she starts towards the Reaping ball and pulls out the first name.
"Daisy Goldenflower!"
It takes a long moment for her to register her name being called, as if the distance between Lucrezia and where Daisy stands at the back of the stockade has somehow been increased a thousandfold. Her perpetual smile drops off her face, but she starts forwards. The cameras capture her from every angle, the slight, blonde-haired little girl in the pink sundress, looking scared but still remarkably self-possessed as she walks slowly out from the stockade, flanked by Peacekeepers who dwarf her even more.
She can hear her heart, pounding in her head like a drumbeat; she feels it in the tips of her fingers and the sides of her neck, and she uses the beat to distract her – lub-dub, lub-dub, one foot in front of the other, marching to the speeding rhythm of the blood thundering in her ears. Her sandals stick to her feet; she's sweating, and not from the warmth. But her mind stays empty, distant, her mouth unsmiling and her eyes wide with fear.
Lub-dub, lub-dub. Her heart isn't slowing, but it's steady, if fast, as she mounts the steps. She concentrates on keeping pace with it, bringing her foot down on every other beat, walking steadily and deliberately across the stage towards Lucrezia. And then Lucrezia's hand closes around Daisy's, welcoming her onstage with a white-toothed smile, and suddenly it's all too much. She's not walking any more, and the thud of her heart isn't a distraction without the repetitive movement of her feet. Lucrezia's lips are red, red as blood, and her eyes are blankly uncaring, and it isn't even fear that brings the uncharacteristic tears to Daisy's eyes, but the sudden realisation that things are never going to be the same. The odds aren't in her favour, and if she dies, then that's the end for her family. No brothers, no sisters, no cousins, nobody. Her parents are going to be left all alone, and there's never going to be another Goldenflower.
It's a horrible thought, a thought with spikes on it, that catches in her throat and tears at her eyes. She never usually cries, not over anything, but as she steps to the back of the stage, it's impossible to stop the tears that are already starting to flow.
It's never nice when a twelve-year-old is Reaped. The fact that after that surprising show of confidence, she's already crying in full view of the cameras only makes it worse. It's depressing, not only for the District crowd – filled with people whose horrorstruck faces are clear from the stage and clearer on the screens – but for the Capitol audience as well.
The only person who seems unaffected is Lucrezia, who seems about as aware of the sadness of the situation as she is of the shrillness of her voice. She's still smiling, looking perfectly enthusiastic, as she steps up to draw the name of the male tribute.
"Bernard Stiles!"
It falls into his ears like a stone into a well, disturbing the stillness of his mind with breaking waves of sudden, chaotic panic. His face – thin, tan, and acne-scarred – remains impassive, besides maybe a slight tightening of his lips, but his heart is suddenly racing. Time seems to have slowed, flowing as sluggishly as tar around him as he struggles to keep his composure.
He isn't built for this. He's tall and skinny, with arms like wet rope, too weak to be a fighter, too shy to be a crowd-pleaser, not athletic enough to run and hide. In a straight fight, he won't stand a chance. The Games will chew him up and spit him out.
But he's rational, and he's used to hiding what he feels and fighting on through it. He swallows, raising his chin slightly, and with the world still feeling impossibly slow and distant, he starts to walk. With every step, he's thinking, turning the situation over and over in his head, keeping a lid on the wild terror and shock which threaten to overwhelm him. He has to start thinking how to win, and start early – he's at a disadvantage, and always will be, so he needs any edge he can get. What can he do? Well, screaming and running – which is what every instinct is telling him to do – is clearly not an option. He has to be brave. He has to be fearless. What do Careers do?
They close off, comes the answer, almost immediate. Look at a Career. They don't seem human. That's what they teach them, when they train them. Not to be human. Not to be weak.
All right, then. He swallows, once, and tries not to let his eyes slide sideways to Ian. Then, steeling himself against the roaring fear in his head, he raises his chin a little, schools the last of the expression off his face, and steps out of the stockade. He doesn't try for confidence or swagger, he doesn't shrink from the cameras, and he neither smiles nor frowns. He is expressionless, unreadable, almost inhuman.
They want a killer, and he'll give them one.
It looks rather pathetic, when Lucrezia steps back to let the Mayor speak. The young Mayor, still stuttering and stumbling uncertainly through the Treatyand clearly hyperaware of the cameras; little Daisy, standing with her head in her hands and her shoulder shaking with racking sobs; and bony, acne-ridden Bernard, whose calm demeanour and apparent stillness doesn't quite make up for the fact that he looks like he might struggle to lift a weapon, let alone use one. But there is a certain strength to the gesture when, as they shake hands, Bernard squeezes Daisy's hand, reassuringly if awkwardly. She sniffles, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, and manages to smile up at him.
The applause is weak, the bare minimum required from the District, as the anthem strikes up. When the cameras shift to Ten, to rolling fields and open skies, Bernard and Daisy have stepped apart again, but Daisy is no longer crying.
In Ten, the Representative is Avena Madder, young and petite and cheerful, who springs up to the Reaping balls almost before the Mayor's finished his history speech. She's smiling almost manically, her teeth dazzlingly white and sharp, and her purple eyes bright. Her long violet hair is so painstakingly coiffed and sprayed that hardly a strand moves, no matter how much she bounces around, and her dark skin doesn't seem to have any pores at all. Even by Capitol standards, she looks like a doll, if a very beautiful one.
When she dips into the Reaping ball – a swift, shallow motion, no digging or rummaging here – it's with a cheerful "Ladies first, as always!" and a brighter smile yet, until it seems like her face might split in two. She clears her throat, still smiling, and unfolds the paper with a flick.
"Lailani Riza!"
It takes a moment, and a light push in the shoulder, before she starts moving. Her limbs feel leaden, her heart seems to have stopped, and something's constricting around her chest, because this can't be right. It can't be. She must have misheard, or Avena must have misspoken, there must have been a mistake somewhere, because it can't be her name on that paper, and that brown-skinned, black-haired girl whose face is on every screen above the stage must be another girl. It doesn't matter that when she blinks, so does the girl on the screen, or that when she steps forwards, so does that girl. It doesn't matter, because it can't be her.
But the Peacekeepers step in to escort her up to the stage, and when one of their hands presses against the shoulder of the girl on the screen, Lani feels the pressure on her own shoulder, and suddenly, her heart's gone from standing still to trying to thunder its way out of her chest. It can't be her, but it is her, and for a moment, she doesn't know what to do.
Instinct kicks in, an instinct honed by years watching the Reapings, and before she's even really come to terms with the idea that she's the tribute, she's already taking action. A small, confident smile quirking at the lips, a toss of her head, an attempt to wipe the fear from her brown eyes. She's a good liar, but what's needed here is to lie to herself – to convince herself that she's ready, that all the training her brothers made her do is going to pay off, that she's not going to die. She can't die. If she dies, her brothers will never let her hear the end of it.
It's banal, but it gets her up to the stage, where Avena pumps her hand with far more enthusiasm than anyone should be able to put into a handshake. Lani smiles back at her, a thin, sarcastic smile which looks like nothing next to Avena's perpetual grin, and takes in the applause as she steps back into place. Her chest still feels constricted, her breathing a struggle, but she almost believes she can do this. She's never let other people get the better of her before. She's not going to start now.
Avena's applause is louder than anyone else's. She seems genuinely excited by the Reaping, and it's easy to believe that the smile she's still wearing is honest; it's the only part of her that looks real, even fixed as it is. As Lailani steps back, Avena bounces over to the boys' Reaping ball, clapping her hands together again like a little child, and pulls out the first name on the top.
"Lysander Bowie!"
He shouldn't be afraid. He's faced death before – the old burn scars on his face and arm are testament to that – and from everything Jareth's said to him, he thought that facing death once would make facing it again that much easier. And maybe it does, because he doesn't panic and he doesn't freeze, and his rational mind goes on ticking, although adrenaline spikes briefly through his system.
But he's still afraid, and it's that, not his name being called, which takes him off-guard. Still, he manages to keep himself together, reaching up to push back his unruly blonde hair as he starts towards the stage. Like Lailani before him, he keeps his head up and his expression steady, relaxing as much as he can, his arms swinging loosely at his side as he takes long, even strides out of the stockade. In a strange kind of way, the walk up to the stage is a thousand times scarier than diving into the fire all those years ago. Then, it was quick and adrenaline-fuelled, a panic response, something he didn't even think about. Then, the danger was immediate, and he could do something about it.
Now, he can't do anything. He's trapped, like a fly under glass, in the glare of the cameras. There's no choice, no decision to make, nothing he can do but follow the pattern the Capitol set for him and do it as bravely as possible. Up the steps, onto the pallets of the stage. Jareth sits at the back, with the other Victors, and for a moment Lysander locks eyes with him, hoping that Jareth will be his mentor. Jareth's been training him for years, and if anyone can see Lysander through the Games, it's him.
But Lysander can't focus too long on that. The cameras are on him, and he has to act as if his life depended on it, because it does. He has to be confident, be brave, be aloof but likeable, and most of all, not let anyone in on the fact that he fears this. He doesn't talk to Avena, and he doesn't shake her proffered hand; he just takes up his place next to Lailani, staring out at the crowd, and stands strong as the applause washes over him.
Avena seems completely unfazed by the apparent snub, and applauds just as loudly for Lysander as she did for Lailani. The cameras linger on him a little longer – he's a good subject for the screen, handsome and steady, with a touch of mystery added by the scarring which covers one eye – before turning to the Mayor as he steps up to the podium. As the Treaty is read, the cameras focus in on him, and then the crowd, and then back to the tributes, just in time for them to shake hands.
They have a lot in common. Both are seventeen, and hold themselves well, with adult presence. Both, when they shake hands, do so firmly, and make eye contact, her monolidded brown eyes meeting his bright blue ones. Their handshake is brief, and both, when they step away, seem to do so with mutual respect. As the anthem strikes up yet again, and the cameras pan over the green fields of Ten and then cut away to Eleven, things are looking up. Certainly, after the poor showing from Nine, the tributes from Ten seem to have the odds a little more in their favour.