A/N: Three words.
I'M SO SORRY...
I've been procrastinating, or busy, or just Writer's Blocked to high hell...
BUT IT'S HERE NOW!
Now, news. I hate reapings. Completely. They're boring. I just...I hate them. For a while, I can tolerate them. But then...just...no. And if you guys want to wait two or three weeks for updates until Capitol chapters and want me to finish the reapings with low quality...I will. But if you think it's not worth it, like me, I'm skipping to the Capitol chapters. Sorry to the people who were skipped.
D9- 17- (Asher Lightwood)
I once became surprisingly close to dating a tribute. Maybe it's a stupid story, but I treasure it. Because she's dead.
It was last fall, before the Games. I had tried once, but she seemed so busy, so focused, that I couldn't bother—not that day. I figured I would wait until after the reaping, maybe. I knew that people were always less tense after the reaping is over, because if you're actually in the district at that time, as long as you're not the family or friend of a tribute, you're in the clear and know that it will be a relatively deathless year for you.
Her name was Artemis. Artemis Nightheart. She was very pretty too, with long, jet black hair and eyes that held an endless gray storm that was so tempting to enter and become one with that you could almost say she was enticing. And she was very mysterious, so of course that only made her more desirable. I think she noticed the attention she got from admirers, but subconsciously wrote it off before she comprehended it; she was just mysterious like that, and it seemed that she noticed the attention…without noticing it.
Mysterious people are always so confusing.
But she was reaped, and she came so close to winning—I rooted for her, all the way, to the end, that mysterious girl who was a few months younger than me—but then she died, in a tragic battle towards the end that will be honored in all the history of District Nine. Artemis Nightheart, the girl to continue the rebellious interview streak, won't ever be forgotten, I'm sure. Of course, Aria Garnet is a little more memorable, what with her gruesome, sick death and the fact that she was the first to make a quote that will last to the end of time in her interviews: "Don't forget us."
So it's been a sort of hard year for me, even though it was a District Nine tribute that won. But I didn't know Gray Hager. I knew Artemis. I'd talked to her before, in person.
None of that matters anymore. All that matters is living to the next day. And I do that by working in the fields like my mother and father, but I work a lot longer than they do to get extra money. My family is always telling me how I shouldn't work so hard, but I do it anyway, and we're all alive and living as well as we can because of it. Sometimes I even skip school to work all day long, but I only do this when we're having a particularly hard time.
I wake up on the day of the reaping, pretty exhausted from a sleep so restless that it shouldn't even be considered a sleep. I
get out of my bed and instinctively go over to my eight-year-old brother Jace's bed. He's out like a light, sleeping like the stump he is. I shake him lightly until he groans then I mutter his name repeatedly, hardly getting it through my lips, I'm still so tired.
"Whaaaat?" he groans, drawing out the word and turning into more of a moan than a question.
"Wake up." I shake Jace again.
"No!" he refuses, flipping over and burying his defiant little face into the pillow, grumblings under his breath. "I'm still sleepy."
"I'm sleepier than you, little brother," I tell him, and let out a large, long, loud yawn to prove my point. "Just get up."
"No, no, no, no, no, no, no…"
He's probably already awake now, but you see, my little brother is as stubborn in the morning as a rock. Tell him to move, and he just won't. Often he'll even be so stubborn that my parents just let him skip school. When he was six, he'd skipped so much school, we had to drag him out of his bed and force him to go to his little kindergarten classroom, thereby making me late for my first class.
"Jace Lightwood, wake up and this will all be so much easier."
"No."
"Wake up or I'll get Mom up here."
"No!"
"Fine, I'll have Beatrice sit on you and Ada slobber all over your sleepy little self," I threaten, and I really will have them do that so that no one is late or absent from the reaping—in which we should all beg for our dear lives that we act ill to the point of not telling time very well. Or else we'll be punished. And then acting as though we're on our deathbeds will not be so difficult.
And in other depressing news, it's my little sister's first reaping. Great. I can already see her little ashen face signing in and then see her form visibly shake as she goes to her section. Of course, I'm probably just overestimating the amount of fear she'll hold, but the image still plagues me. I don't dare picture her little ashen face let the tears fall as her feet move up to the stage.
Jace, grumbling so much it nearly drives me mad, finally gets up, slinging his feet over the side of the bed on the side that I'm not leaning over and goes to his small dresser. He throws out a shirt and pants and then climbs back in bed in his nightclothes. "There. I'll be ready when it's time to go."
"That's it. I'm sending Ada and Tris," I tell him, and exit my room to go to my sisters'. I knock on their door quietly so as not to wake my two-year-old sister up if she's deep into sleep. Beatrice answers the door almost immediately, her black, curly hair askew in natural ringlet-like locks in front of her face. She sighs. "It's Jace."
"I figured," she mumbles. "Need me to wake him up?"
"Yes, please," I groan. "He is a morning pain."
"Hey, so are you, sometimes."
"Rarely, Beatrice," I tell her in a mumbled voice.
Beatrice rolls her eyes. "How many times does Mom have to tell you not to mumble before you stop?" She sighs, but it quickly turns into a large, noisy yawn. "It's annoying."
"No one can stop me from mumbling," I say to her with a smile and pat my little sister's head. "Not Mom, not Dad, not you or Jace or Ada."
"Not even Ada?" she exclaims with mock-surprise. "I'm getting dress. Go wake Jace up." She smirks.
I roll my eyes and trudge away from her door, going back to my room and picking my little brother out of his bed. I sit him down on the floor and go to my dresser, where my reaping clothes are. I take out a decent gray shirt and black somewhat dressy pants. Then I kneel next to my groaning brother and tell him to go out and wait for breakfast. He, grumbling, obliges, and I get dressed.
And here we go again, for another year.
...
"Eat your bread, Jace Lightwood."
"But-"
"Hey, hey, hey!" my mother says, raising an eyebrow. "Your father, your brother, and I worked hard to get you that bread and you will not let it go to waste. Now, have it while it's still warm."
"Yes, Mom..."
My family sits around the table, dressed to our finest, as we eat our breakfast. A solemnness has settled throughout the room, even in my littler siblings Ada and Jace. Silence laces the graveness that fills us as we eat, and it's rather cliché - silence sits upon us as he eat. All the same and nonetheless, it's entirely true. I find myself beginning to feel sick. If I eat another bite, I might vomit. So I stop eating and stare around.
...
Eventually everyone finishes, and I hop out of my seat immediately. Rushing to the living room, I plop down on the couch and escape the awkwardness of the kitchen and breakfast with a sigh of relief. The bread finally settles and I am no longer liable to puke - thank God - but I still do not feel well. Of course I don't. No sane non-Career eligible district citizen would feel good on reaping day.
At least, I figure, I can volunteer for my little sister this year if she's reaped. I'd like to think I'd have the guts to do this, but with all honesty, it's not certain that I would. I'd protect Beatrice, Jace, and Ada to the ends of the Earth, but I am weak and I have a habit of freeze up when nervous, scared, or shocked - a natural response to many people for such stimuli.
…
Beatrice looks to me for guidance as we enter the square. I nod reassuringly and take her to be signed in. She goes before me, waiting diligently after they've drawn her blood so I can be signed in, her fingers clutching her shirt's fabric as she struggles to maintain calmness.
They zap me after my wait of about twenty minutes—every child in the district; it's going to be a long sign-in line—and finally I take my little sister to a clearer spot.
"Just head for the Twelves. Look for your friends maybe."
"You're going to the Seventeens," she states absently.
"Well, I'm seventeen, Tris…" I say, giving her a slight, weak smile.
She shoots me a glare. "Beatrice," she snaps, a shiver noticeably crawling through her. That name is the last name I want to hear today, tied with "Asher."
Beatrice slowly then meanders through the tightly-woven crowed to her age group section.
I make my way to my section, too, and then I stand there for what seems like the longest time while I wait for the mayor to step up to the stage and recite his speeches.
Once he does, I wish he never had. It's a grueling process of longing and wishing you'd never longed for, the reaping is, where waiting is a delicacy that you don't realize is so great until you're not waiting anymore. It's one that you could eat up for nights and nights over, but you'd still feel ever-so-hungry, until you're finally faced with the feast, when you realize you're too full to eat it.
In short, you wait and wish the waiting was over until you're at the reaping, when you wish the waiting had never ended.
Soon the escort is up, and the names are being drawn. The names.
I'm not surprised. So much tesserae... Putting on a smirk and walking up to the stage, the person who owns the stage doesn't seem scared, though he is.
"Asher Lightwood" is the first name called.