A/N: DO NOT STEREOTYPE US, roared the District Six citizens. You have angered them.
D6- 17- (Cade Allens)
My brother Alex and I never really got over the loss of my twin, Bryce. Nor did we ever truly stop grieving for our parents' death. The public mourning vanished. But four years later, I still see my father and mother going ablaze in the fire that killed them at their workplace, which was the business I work in now: making things for transportation vehicles in a factory. I can still see my sister being tortured three years ago in the Games by the District One female.
I hate District One. When I go into the Games next year, I will kill her. I will kill her so hard.
After my sister died, I started to understand the true cruelty of the Games, and that I needed revenge. What else do I really have to live for anyway? It's worth the risk, going into the Games. I secretly train a little bit, but not like a Career would; only a little here, some there, throwing a knife one day, stabbing a cutout the next, or even tying knots and making fires. Subtle things my brother doesn't notice or won't see because he's at work.
And hell, if he catches me, he thinks I'm suicidal anyway. He'll never know.
The only person who does is my girlfriend and best friend, Lissa Kate.
Lissa and I sit here now, together, fingers entwined. She smiles at me and closes her eyes. We have just recently become more than friends. This is our sixth date, and at such an odd time, but we wanted to see each other so much on this dreadful day. We just couldn't stay away. I squeeze her hand lightly and quickly, and she opens her eyes again.
"Cade," Lissa whispers.
"Yes, Lis?" I ask softly, smiling.
Her delicate, frail, whitish face looks up at me carefully. Her lips, red as blood, part with a large sigh, and her eyes bore into mine, their perfect aqua blueness seeping into my soul and overtaking me. Her curly black hair frames her face delicately, and she looks so fragile and breakable that I can't help but wrapping my arm around her shoulder to keep her safe from harm.
"I'm scared," she tells me quietly, choosing her words precisely.
"I know, baby," I say. "I know." I hug her tighter and bury my face in her dark hair.
She holds me, too, and we are content, together. We are one, and that's all the matters for now.
But later, when we have to part and she has to go home, it hits me hard. I grip her hand and she smiles, telling me it's time to go. She'll find me at the reaping. I nod, and she leaves, closing the door soundlessly behind her. As soon as she does, Alex comes home from God-knows where, obviously a little drunk or a little hungover.
Alex points at the door. "Lissa was here?" he asks. Hungover. His words are not slurred and his voice sounds normal except a hint more gravelly.
"Yeah," I say.
"Date?"
"Yeah."
"Ooh-la-la, little brother," Alex says jokingly, but I blush anyway, and sigh, too. "You two are becoming a little serious, aren't you?"
"Is that a bad thing?" I question him.
"No, no, no," he reassures me. "Of course not." He pauses. "It's..." He trails off, sighs, and shakes his head. "It's very ooh-la-la of you."
"Uh, thanks?"
Alex nods and starts heading towards his room. "You had better go get ready."
"Wait, Alex," I say, and he stops and turns around rigidly. "What-"
"Don't ever," he mutters, turns back around, and walks to his room, fast. He closes his door shut behind him loudly, nearly slamming it. I go to my room too, and when I get in there, I collapse on my bed, a headache arising. I stare at the white, leaky roof that Alex and I have yet to patch. We keep saying we will really soon, but you know how that goes.
I decide to get up and get dressed. I pick out my best dress pants, dress shirt, and dress shoes and take off my casual wear. I slip into my reaping clothes and wander out to the living room. I turn on the old television set that we have the antenna just right so it'll work and see that District Four reapings are just ending. They play the reapings live, and they each last half an hour, so next up is District Five's footage, and in about fifteen minutes, probably when they've just drawn the first tribute, Alex and I will have to go to our reaping. My reaping.
The mayor of District Five begins his speech, which the cameramen capture thoroughly and the Capitol broadcasts happily.
Eventually, the escort begins to draw names.
"Tenne Bradhe!" says District Five's escort.
Alex comes up behind me. "Time to go, Cade."
"I know, I know," I say gruffly, and stand up, walking out the door in front of him. I don't need anyone to escort me there anymore.
On the way to the reaping, Alex trudges and I walk fast until I have distanced myself from him and his drunken wreck, just waiting to turn this whole place into mayhem. It's just a matter of time.
At the square, I wait in line for it to be my turn to be signed in. I watch Lissa in our age section from afar, smiling with each flip of her hair, each nervous crossing and uncrossing of her arms. She even looks around once, but she doesn't notice me, in the back of the very long line waiting to be signed it. With all my admiration pointed at her and not balled away and replaced by focus, the other idiots in the back of the line with me and I don't notice that the other line is empty. I slip into it easily.
"Your finger," says the Peacekeeper, even though I am already shoving it out there for him.
He pricks it delicately and smudges the blood onto the paper. The blood-lust in his eyes shows me that he wants to do so much more to us all than just simply pricking our fingers a little. Most of us hardly even notice it anymore.
I stand behind Lissa and tap her shoulder. She turns around so quickly that her hair hits my face. When she sees me, she smiles happily, and grasps my hand, holding it like a lifeline. Her lips purse as the last victor steps up to the stage, and we know that the reaping will begin very shortly. He's always later, coming on the nick of time. He is our oldest living victor, from the first Games after the Capitol rebelled against the rebels long ago and fought back "what was rightfully theirs."
The mayor steps up to his place on the stage and does a quick mike check, and then we're on; all of District Six is being broadcasted live on television. Maybe they even got a fast picture of Lissa and I. Maybe they zoomed in on our hands held together and are showing the Capitol beautiful love even outside the Games. Maybe I should backhand their ugly little painted faces with my free hand...
"Cade," squeaks Lissa. "Too hard."
"Oh." I loosen my grip on her hand and try to smile forcefully, but I'm pretty sure it just looks like a grimace or just kind of creepy.
My heart pumps double-time as I wait for the name to be drawn. I don't have to worry about my brother anymore, but I still have to worry about myself and about Lissa. We are both eligible, and we both take tesserae for our less-than-rich families. She takes a considerable amount more than me, despite my strong protest, due to her family being a large one. I only have to get a bucket load for Alex and I, but even then it's less than hers.
"Now, we shall draw names, and our new escort, Vivid O'Ryan will be doing so," says the mayor, and Vivid, a woman with a sundress of vivid colors and hair that almost looks natural against her pale skin steps up to the mike. But it's far too bright to actually be natural.
"Hello, hello. Let's begin; we are running a bit on time," Vivid proclaims excitedly, and shoves her red-gloved hand into the bowl, the glove catching a glint of sunlight. She catches a name in the thousands and reads it. Then she steps closer tot he microphone and announces, "Phoenix Grant."
A tall, blonde, blue-eyed boy steps up to the stage with swagger. I indirectly know this boy. He is District Six's playboy, "God's gift to girls."
He, confident with a genuine smile out to all the girls in the crowd, stands on the stage, reacting exactly the opposite of how any other person in District Six might, though I doubt he is actually feeling so upbeat and giddy as he is, and instead just trying to pull an act so that he doesn't look weak, because God forbid the marvelous Phoenix Grant look weak.
"Well, you seem pretty high-and-mighty," rambles Vivid, her voice screechier than usual. Light spits on her golden hair with faint streaks of bright and dark purple. She looks at him expectantly and waits for him to say something amazing, a quote to quote years from now. She does look pretty young and not just made to look young like other Capitol escorts are. But who knows - they could be upgrading the plastic surgery methods.
"I- I, um, am high-and-mighty," Phoenix says, and though he looks like he's holding up, his voice sounds kind of numb and like he isn't sure what's going on. That actually makes sense. "What's that mean?"
"And now," exclaims Vivid, trying to diverge from Phoenix's stupefied ignorance, "we will draw the next of the three names." She draws a name. "Fiasca Ells."
A girl slowly steps up to the stage, dirt-thin. Her hair is greasy and her eyes are shattered into so many broken dreams and sadnesses. She looks weak and so underfed that her skin is paler than a clear glass window. Her shirt is very tight so I can see every one of her ribs and count them exactly. She is almost a walking dead person, and I know that she'll be dead before the Games. Either she'll starve or she'll eat so much that her little, poor stomach won't be able to handle it and it'll burst. She'll die, probably at the dinner table, just trying to get food.
I feel awful for her, because she won't get a quick death at the hands of a sympathetic tribute. She won't make it that far. They'll probably have to have a re-reaping.
"I volunteer!" someone - a male in my section, I think - yells, interrupting the pitiful silence as everyone sends their condolences to this twelve-year-old's poor, poverted family. I am sure that some of the richer folks of the district will give them money or food even though somone is now volunteering.
Shock registers in the crowd - a few gasps and an utter gawking silence. Volunteers are all but nonexistent, a word basically meaning death. Even more so than the word tribute is. Volunteers are cocky and ignorant and easily get themselves killed with their giant ego and their lack of any paranoia or sense that they need to watch out for things.
On the stage, the boy tells the girl to go back to her section; the reaping will be over soon and she was never reaped. When she protests that she was, he says, "It's a dream, Fiasca. When you go home and go to sleep, you'll wake up and you'll be safe." The display moves the crowd in a touching way. A few even silently touch their heart, a symbol of respect from District Six. I look over to see Lissa teary-eyed at the spectacle.
"Oh, dear, Cade," she says sadly. "I hope this boy wins, I really do."
I grumble at her and wait for the next name.
I'm not jealous. No, never.
"What's your name?" Vivid asks, dumbfounded and on the verge of bawling.
"Dante Kyanide," says the volunteer with a sad smile, but in his eyes is an obvious glint of mischief.
"Oh, Dante Kyanide," says Vivid. "You are a tribute to remembered, I will tell you this much." She reaches in the bowl with one hand and wipes her eyes with another. Everyone is acting like such melodramatic freaks. "And last but not least... Cade Allens."
Lissa's grip on my hand considerably and her eyes meet with mine. I shrug, because I was planning to volunteer next year anyway. "It's okay, Lis. I train. You know I train," I say, but still she holds onto my hand like a lifeline. "Lissa!" Finally she lets go and I step up to the stage. I stand up straight with my shoulders back and look out at the crowd bravely.
We shake hands, one by one, before Vivid takes us into the Justice Building, where I will say my goodbyes, and then I'll be off.
I'll be off to doom or destiny.
D6- 17- (Dante Kyanide)
Control is of the essence in this life, you know. In mine.
I am a pariah, but not an animal. I am an outcast, a misfit, and loner. But who really cares? I live the way I live, and I live my life. It may be dark and cold and a tad lonesome from time to time, but it's mine, and mine to keep, and it's the one thing I have the most and the least control over. I can control taking a turn and going back to live with my parents; I can control whether I quit my job as a train attendant and starve or keep it and live; but I don't control my fate on the streets. I don't control whether the Peacekeeper I could bump into sometime has had a bad day and has his gun loaded and ready to shoot.
I do control the reaping. Oh, yes, that is the thing everyone wants to control, the thing everyone fears. The reaping, in my home district, is a horribly frightening thing. It's one people lose sleep over, the day that those broken victors look back to and go out of control - because there is that word again. Control. We don't - I don't - control our sanity. At least, I don't think so. Our fate controls our sanity, because it decides if something that everyone, everything, anyone, and anything would go over the deep end happens to us.
I just...like to control what I can, in my short little life that is probably so screwed up it's not even funny in other people's eyes.
Maybe it's not my fault. Maybe it's theirs.
District Six is stereotyped to be crawling with morphlings who paints each other's faces and giggle at sunset together, absentminded and confused, lost in their world of drug abuse and even the occasional case of alcohol along with morphling. We do have the most illegal morphling addicts in the country, but it's not like they are everywhere. They do pop up a lot, sure, but District Six is kind of small. A lot of them stay indoors so they're not caught. At least they still have some brain cells.
My parents contribute to the drug abuse population in this district.
My brother contributes to the dead.
When I was reaped at age twelve, unprepared and scared, my twin brother volunteered, and he went in, head held high, terror down the drain. Of course, the terror was on his face and his head was glued to his shoes, but still.
He was tortured. I am determined - more than that - to kill the people who are of the same district as she was, the girl who killed him. And to do that I must volunteer, and I will.
And I think I might just make myself look a little better than I am. But hey, if you're going to love me, love me a lot.
A/N: Dante tells me to tell you that if he could, he would've put in a winky face. So I did. In bold. It's not really part of the story. It's A/N. Oh, fine, Cato, I'll take it out!
I'll try to update faster next time, and maybe I can even stop being lazy long enough to add a third POV! :-O