Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games, nor do I make any money from this fic. All characters you recognize are Suzanne Collins'. If you don't recognize them, they're mine

AN: Thanks to all those who have reviewed already. Keep reading, and keep reviewing! ~VWHBS

Four Unfortunate Souls

The square is set up as it always is on Reaping Day. There is one central area, where two Peacekeepers sit, taking the attendance of everyone passing through, ensuring that everyone is where they should be. From this area, three lines are cordoned off. One leads to the section where everyone who is not eligible for reaping will stand. Another leads to where all the boys that can be reaped are, and the last is the same, but for girls. All around the square are huge television screens so that everyone can easily see the poor tributes when they step onto the stage. The stage, right in front of the Justice Building, holds a couple of rickety chairs, a podium, and a rather disgruntled looking lady.

Within a second of looking at her, it's obvious that she's from the Capitol. Her hair is a shocking electric blue, along with her eyelids. Her lips are painted a neon green, and her clothes are the brightest of oranges. She fancies herself pretty, I guess. I wonder what she'd look like stripped of all her Capitol pretentiousness, dressed in the clothes of District Twelve. Would she look like my mother, weary beyond her years from having to raise two boys after the death of her husband? Or would she be more like Leanne, who looks at life with undeniable exuberance, her happiness masked by sharp wit? Or perhaps more like my brother Vander, confused and unlucky, rolling through the day, taking the barbs of others with the same indifference he takes my compliments, or my mother's love? I don't know.

I hold hands with Leanne until the gate, where we must go our separate ways, she to her group, and me to mine. A quick kiss, a clasped hand, and we part, without a word. What could there be to say? "You'll be OK?" Both of us are realists. There's a chance I neither of us will come back to the square. I wonder if I'll kiss her after today. If I'll look at her and be able to tell her just how much I love her. She must be wondering the same.

In the group, I quickly find my brother Vander, listless as always, fidgeting with his hands, and looking around, clearly scared. His checked shirt sticks to his back with perspiration in the unusually cool day. I clap a hand on his shoulder, softly, and he looks at me.

"What's gonna happen, Haymitch? Who's going to be taken away today? Another one of your friends? Another one of mine? You? Me? I'm scared, brother. I'm very, very scared."

I don't like it when Vander speaks like this. Not because of what he says, because I often have the same thoughts, but because when he voices them, they invariably come through. Vander, whatever his oddities, has hunches. Good ones.

"We'll be okay, Vander." I find lying to my brother easier than lying to anyone else. He takes everything I say with absolute faith.

The escort stands up, and a hush falls over the crowd.

"Welcome, one and all, to the Reaping for the Fiftieth Hunger Games, and Panem's Second Quarter Quell!" She stops for a moment, an awkward second in which she expects applause, and District Twelve waits for her to move along.

After a pregnant pause, she steps back from the podium, and a video starts to play on the television screens. We see the replay of President Snow reading out the card which told us what special torture the Capitol would inflict on us this year.

Onscreen, a Capitol boy approaches the President with a heavy wooden box. It's coloured like our table at home. My guess is that it's mahogany. The boy waits as the President draws an envelope from the box, clearly marked with a large "Fifty," then walks away, leaving the President alone. He opens the envelope, and says:

"In the Second Quarter Quell, as a reminder that two rebels from the Districts died for every Capitol citizen, twice the number of tributes will be reaped." President Snow looks at the screen, and smiles, showing his teeth. His slanted eyes, his pinched nose, his bared teeth, all make him look so much like a snake that I'm repulsed, taking a step back. As soon as the moment comes, though, it disappears, and the screen fades to black.

For a moment, the whole district holds its breath. The only sound is the wind blowing through the forum, leaves rustling, children who are too young for the Reaping fidgeting, and a baby softly whimpering. Then, the mayor steps up to the podium, and breaks the silence.

His speech is one that everyone in District Twelve has heard every year since they were born.

"Hundreds of years ago, a nation was here, where we stand today. It was plagued by bad governing, corruption, illness, and eventually fell to its enemies around the world, after being embroiled in a bitter war for decades. From the ashes of this fallen country rose Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by thirteen districts. For years these groups coexisted peacefully, until the districts, led by rebellious and traitorous men, attacked the Capitol that governed them. This Capitol won this Civil War, and as punishment, obliterated District Thirteen, and brought the Hunger Games to Panem. The districts were told to annually send two of their children, one male, one female, twenty-four in total, to the Capitol to fight to the death in an arena. The winner would be crowned as a Victor, and given all possible rewards, and their district would be honored with presents from the Capitol for the entirety of the year. In the fifty years of the Games, District Twelve had had the honour of producing one Victor, Christian Banks! And it is he whom I would like to welcome to the stage!"

A lean and unshaven man walks onto the stage to unenthusiastic applause, waves his hand to the crowd distractedly, and slumps into his seat. He's forty-five, at a glance. I obviously wasn't alive when he won his Games. It's clear to see that he's a broken man. I wonder what his Games did to him.

The mayor steps away from the podium, and the escort steps up.

"Let's start with the girls, shall we?"

She walks up to the bowl.

Leanne's name is in it only five times.

The escort picks a name.

Leanne hasn't taken tesserae.

The escort walks up to the microphone.

There's such a small chance that my girlfriend will be picked.

The escort unfolds the paper.

I whisper to myself: "Breathe, Haymitch."

"District Twelve's first tribute for the Fiftieth Hunger Games is... Miranda Capulet!"

I exhale. A small whimper cuts through the silence, coming from the girl's section. I watch as a girl, probably twelve, walks out of the crowd, and onto the stage. She's tiny. She won't last a minute in the arena with forty-seven other competitors, and she knows it. Tears flow down her face unabashedly, although she doesn't make a sound. I can hear her mother crying in the background. The escort smiles at the poor girl, shakes her hand, opens her green-rimmed mouth, shuts it without saying anything, and moves onto the other bowl.

She plunges her hand in, and takes out a slip of paper. Like every year since I was twelve, my heart stops at this moment. I start to sweat. My vision blurs. I feel like I can't stand up, and I lean against Vander. He notices, but he doesn't say anything, or even look at me. My brother, the rock.

The escort opens up the piece of paper. "District Twelve's second tribute is... Tybalt d'Ithaca!"

Relief.

A big, lumbering eighteen year old, the size of a mountain, a boy who had entered the mines early, steps out of the crowd. Physically, he is about as different from Miranda as he can be. Where she is small, almost pocket-sized, he is large, with hands like shovels, and legs like tree trunks. Where she is crying and whimpering, he is walking with his chin up, eyes forward, lips set in a grim line. Where she is young, at her first Reaping, he is eighteen, at his last. A more different pair would be hard to find in all of District Twelve.

If this had been last year, or next year, or any year except for this one, I would have been out of the square in minutes, leading my brother by the arm, seeking out my mother and Leanne in the crowd. I would kiss Leanne, and she would go with her family to her home, and I would go with my family to my home. My mother would hug my brother and I, and we would eat a dinner of turkey and tesserae mush, somehow spiced up by my mother's cooking skills.

But that would be on any other year. This year, I have to go through the agonizing torture of the Reaping again, see that hand plunge into the bowl again, live through the possibly imminent announcement of my death again.

This time, I feel less pain, less emotion, as the escort struts over to the bowl to take out the slip of paper from the girl's bowl. She walks back over to the microphone. I hate her stupid walk, the little bounce she puts into every step, the noise when the front of her foot hits the ground, because she's too lazy to pick up her feet when she's walking.

The escort opens her mouth again, to condemn to death another one of District Twelve's children, to ruin another life. "District Twelve's third tribute for this year's Hunger Games is... Maysilee Donner!"

A girl, a year younger than me, walks out of the crowd, and onto the stage. She's small, but not as small as Miranda. Unlike Miranda, she's not crying at all. Her head is up, and her eyes staring straight ahead. In the crowd, I can see three girls clinging to each other, crying. Two of them look to be her sisters, and the other is probably a friend. They follow her as close to the stage as they can, until they are met by a wall of peacekeepers. Maysilee turns around and waves, a sad wave to the District as a whole, before she mounts the stage.

Leanne's safe from the Reaping now, at least for this year. Now it's just Vander and I that I have to worry about. The Capitol still has the ability to tear us away from our homes this year.

The escort walks over to a Reaping bowl for the last time this year. As she gropes around for the slip of paper, a thought hits me. The person whose name is drawn from that bowl will actually be the last person Reaped for this year's Hunger Games. All forty-seven of their competitors will already know their fate, that of being thrust into the arena. Their names on their little pieces of paper will have dipped and ducked the others in the bowl, trying their hardest to avoid being picked, when, at the last moment, right before relief could be achieved, they're snagged by an escort's groping hand.

My senses feel sharpened. I can see little details that I hadn't noticed before. A bead of sweat trickling down the face of the boy beside me. A fleck of green lipstick that's been smeared on the escort's face. Vander's chest expanding and contracting, in and out, in and out, as he tries to control his breathing.

She's at the podium for the fourth time today, ready to condemn someone else to their death. "District Twelve's last tribute for the Quarter Quell is... Haymitch Abernathy!"

AN: I hope you guys liked it! Hopefully, I'll post the conversation Haymitch will have with his family soon, and the train ride should follow directly after. A BIG thanks to my beta reader ChaosandMayhem, who agreed to beta my story even though I'm such a new writer, and she's such a good one :) Go check out her stories, everyone!