A/N: Gah! Horridly busy/distracted past few weeks! I have been plagued with the stomach flu and a case of Writer's Block that would make any writer go madder than usual!

Now, so sorry for the late update. But... You're all Mr. or Mrs. Thick Thick Thick Thickson from Thicktown Thickania, and so's your character(s)!

DOCTOR WHO, BABY.

D7- 17- (Decon Groven)

I am awake, but my eyes are closed. How is this? Normally when you think of waking you, you see a sleepy person sitting up, stretching, and groaning because they want to sleep more, eyes open so they stay awake, right? This is different. I don't want, under any circumstances, to be awake today, even if it means I have to get awfully sick, kind of like Grandpa, but actually sick. As long as I live. As long as I'm not reaped.

I shiver, and it crawls down my spine, ending in the very tip of my toes. I force my eyes open and the light from a window hits me; I shrink back. It shouldn't be too hard to believe that I couldn't sleep last night, or, rather, didn't want to. I am not a night owl, but sleep wouldn't come last night and now I wish it had. My eyes only go half open, I am too tired to do anything, and I have a major headache.

"Decon," says Mom from outside my door kindly. "Get dressed—you slept in."

Imagine that.

When my mother leaves, I waddle over to my dresser, my eyes now open. I yawn and stretch, then open my dresser. The drawer glides out with ease and I take out a brown suit. My eyes half open, I push off the clothes I fell asleep in late last night, after lying awake for the night, pondering. Shadows crept around my room. With today's events crawling up my spine, I had no room to fear the shadows, and instead feared the silence - the silence of the world and universe and life beating around me, and the threat of twenty-three people's silences and worlds and universes and lives stopping, dropping short.

I slide into the suit with a long sigh and a frustrated huff of breath and move around in tight-fitting, old dress wear. It doesn't suit me or fit me, and it's far too fancy for my likings. I hate it, just like I hate the event that comes with it. Anything directly or only associating with the reaping is never, ever good—usually something I hate for some reason, whether it be that their cheeriness kills me or that I can't stand the tightness of the sleeves.

Now I wander downstairs, my steps a little faster than before because I know I might want to hurry. In the dining room, my mother and father are finishing eating. They have two empty but set plates where my grandfather and I were supposed to sit to eat breakfast with them, but I woke up late, and my grandfather is helplessly, hopelessly, terribly depressed.

"Where's Grandpa?" I ask.

"He's still in bed, Decon," my dad tells me, looking at his watch. Dressed in mildly fancy clothing, he looks just like a less-well-dressed, older version of me. He's more serious, though, but he's long since forgotten what it feels like to be at the reaping. He knows what it's like for your child to be there, a feeling I've never known, but he doesn't quite remember the torturous worry.

"Oh," I say and sit down. Mother puts an egg sandwich on my plate, made with tesserae bread and eggs we've gotten from the market. I devour the delicious breakfast quickly and gulp down my water, knowing I don't have a lot of time until the reaping. Then I stand up and stretch, still waking up. The food has pumped energy into me, but I am still not yet entirely up, having had to pop right out of bed and get ready. "I'll wake Grandpa up."

"I'll do it, Decon," Father tells me, and I shrug, nodding. He stands up, pushed his clean plate towards the rusty old sink, and goes into the hallway, moving towards Grandpa's room. I sit at the dining room table while my mother cleans up. Silence deafens us, and we wait for the other to say something, but even though we both know the other is not going to say anything, neither of us speak up.

My grandfather, once a strong and certain man from what I can tell, staggers mindlessly into the room and sits down. My father walks in behind him and tells him gently to stand up. I know it's time to go, so I say goodbye and nudge Grandpa. "Wish me luck," I tell him, and then walk out the door, the depression of my house evaporating outside. I can still see it and hear it in my head though.

The air is damp and foggy outside. The dirt is not dirt, but instead mucky mud, brown and thick, deep and messy. A cloud wanders past the sun as I walk to the square. Other people walk around me—not in a group, but around me—to the square also: adults, infants, toddlers, children, teenagers. Everyone is required to attend this event.

At the square, I get signed in. A Peacekeeper pricks my finger, gives me a cotton ball to dab the blood away, and sends me off to my section. I deposit of the cotton ball and wait for everyone else to get signed in too, crossing my arms impatiently and drumming my fingers on my elbows. I stare at the ground, the gravelly, wet floor of earth.

Eventually, everyone is signed in and ready. The mayor steps up, recites his speeches without even reading his notes, and introduces our victors and our escort, Tracy Mishclaine. Tracy, dressed in a typical tree-like dress, which is blue-green this year, smiles and waves to the crowd. She speaks, clearly but with that slight, squeaky Capitolian accent, to the crowd.

"Hello, citizens of District Seven," Tracy begins. "Welcome to the reaping of the One Hundred Fifty-second Annual Hunger Games! This year, we will reap three lucky tributes to compete in the Games and represent District Seven!" She smiles brighter. "We will begin now, drawing from the singular bowl." She sticks her hand in, and then draws the name out slowly.

Reading it, she pauses.

For a moment, everyone is still with anticipation, fear, or both.

"Jaelyn Annaletto," says Tracy Mishclaine into the microphone.

No one steps up. Small children's voices begin to cry out.

Then, a girl with medium-height chestnut steps out from the fifteens' section. She has dark brown eyes and plain beige skin. She walks rigidly, her arms glued awkwardly to her sides. The girl - Jaelyn, I guess - steps onto the stage and looks down, refusing to meet anyone's eyes. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, her skinny fingers brushing her pale face, blanch from the shock.

"Congratulations, Jaelyn," says Tracy Mishclaine, who then smiles and lets her hand drop back into the ball. "Decon Groven!"

Once it settles in after a mere second that the name is mine, one though flutters into my head: Fuck my life.

My feet shuffle forward. All eyes of everyone in the country are trained on me, and only me. Their thoughts are pinned in some way to the boy walking to the stage, head down, eyes filled with grimness. I'm a tribute, the poor reaped child sent to die. And all I can hope for right now is that I can make it past the bloodbath, unlike the tributes last year.

Stepping up the menacing, gray, stone steps, I feel my hands begin to tremble violently. I grip the hem of mu suit's jacket so that it's not apparent that I'm shaking. I look down at the old, wooden stage, made fifty-three years ago after the reincarnation of the Hunger Games, the very event and war that led to me standing up on this stage, looking out at the crowd.

"Congrats, Decon," Tracy says. She smiles and picks the next name, so quickly that I don't even have time to think before "Damien Andrews" is being called to the stage. He rigidly walks up to the stage, probably the most even out of the three of us. Jaelyn looks over to me, but I look away, not wanting my competitors to think that I will spare them or be kind to them in any way, shape, or form. We are opponents.

The three of us exchange handshakes. Then we're escorted into the Justice Building and Tracy is taking us into an elevator. The ride seems endless and very, very short at the same time, but as soon as it's over, there is a blur of getting Jaelyn and I to appropriate goodbye rooms and then Damien is shuffled into an extra room down the hall.

I sit in the goodbye rooms a long time before my mother walks into the room. She runs over to me and hugs me. I pat her back and she sobs lightly into my jacket. "Oh, Decon. Decon, Decon, no!"

"Mother, let go," I tell her. When she does, I say, "I'm sorry. I love you. I'll try to win."

Father staggers in with Grandpa. Grandpa has tears in his eyes, but he doesn't let them fall. Father sits him in a chair, and he stares at me the whole time, cold and steely blue eyes peering through me, just like mine. There aren't even hints of raven black in his raven hair like mine though, and I watch as the man who ages every day and is far past his physical age in grief, depression, and those occasional hints of wisdom that he shows so very rarely.

Mother sits down next to me. Father paces, cursing and hitting things. Eventually he turns to me, his cold blue eyes practically turning me to stone as if he were the one snake-lady from Greek mythology, which we only hardly go over at school. Really, it's all about trees. We don't even go very deep into botany; we study pine and oak; elm and sassafras; firewood and home-building wood. What we study the most, though, is the best techniques for cutting down wood or building homes or what we should know for whatever job we wish to pursue; in fact, shop class is mandatory for people ages fifteen- though eighteen-years-old if you take certain classes.

"Son," starts my father, but then he becomes fidgety again and has to pause. "Son..."

At a loss for words, he grips the armrest of the couch across from Mother and I, sliding down into its red velvet protection.

Will he tell me to win and kill the innocent, becoming just as wretched as the dead man who killed my granddad's brother, Falcon? Or will he ask me to remain pure and die?

Truthfully, there is no answer.

"Mercy," Grandfather says, speaking up. "Make it a virtue. Follow your virtues."

That's his way of saying, "It's alright. I give you my permission."

Do I want permission to kill? Of course I do. I don't need the permission, but it's nice to have.

"But..." I protest, anyway.

"Don't." He shakes his head, and then mutters the only advice I'll ever truly follow: "Gently. Be someone to look up to...when you return."