AN: This fic is for Irish Luck, whose willingness to try her hand at non-linear storytelling (and the Hunger Games Universe) has challenged me to try something different as well.
This fic is rated T for violence and language.
The Broadcast
Tasha Pushkina isn't stupid. Addict or not she knows my loyalty will cost her. If she wants the Capitol to keep on thinking she missed this morning's Hunger Games festivities due to a violent illness, she needs Tributes and a Victor to corroborate her story.
Xavier Malcovitch isn't a threat. Neither is Klerkov, whose own reputation has gone largely ignored for a quarter of a century. Had he represented a Career District, it'd be another thing, but no one cares about the outcome for lowly Tributes from 6. She doesn't know how hard a sell I'll be—and from her antics she's preparing for the worst.
"Well, come here, bashful!" She beams to Xavier, kneeling down beside me to take a closer look at him. Her elaborate Edo headdress falls completely by the wayside. "My, aren't you adorable! The cameras will just eat you up!"
The other contestants as well, I think as Xavier peers around my ass to analyze this newest anomaly in our ever-changing world. Tasha continues to coo at him, but I cut her off. "He's tired. He needs a place to sleep."
"Cry baby, stay." I order. He doesn't need telling twice. He nestles into the down comforter as Tasha Pushkina pats his hair and covers him up. She thinks she can buy me by doting on Xavier. Fine. But she'd also damn well better do something to protect us. Both.
Cry baby sleeps. My chaperone slinks off to the galley for her morning coffee. I follow. I've watched her on the Games before, well enough to know she's a shallow-minded, vapid, pretty face, nothing more. The thought of her trying to make me her new best friend is sickening.
She must see the glint in my eye. For the next fifteen minutes, she avoids mention of my selling tactics, even the Games themselves at all. She also doesn't bore me with talk of spas, textiles, and the newest genetic make-overs the Capitol has to offer. Instead, she focuses in on what appears the only safe subject: Xavier Malcovitch.
"I can't believe he's really twelve," She murmurs. "You're doing a good thing looking after him."
I don't know how to respond to that. This is the Hunger Games, where strategy is key to staying alive. I need Pushkina's cooperation just as much as she needs mine.
"I promised his mother I wouldn't let him suffer." I return.
"That will prove harder than you know, Petra Angelovna." She takes another long pull at her steaming mug to counter-act the effects of her addiction. "But I am glad."
I shrug.
"You don't say much, do you?" She finally asks.
I am Petra Angelovna. I am about to die. "There's not much to say."
"You're going to have a hard time," she tells me bluntly. "Your District isn't rich. Your Mentor is a drunken fool who's given up on caring, and so your Chaperone has inherited his task of preparing you. She's already let you down."
"It's once a year." I say. "Given everything else against us the very least you could do is show up clean and do your damn job."
Her mask-like face is expressionless. She hides behind her make-up, morphling, and wealth. Her next words catch me off guard. "Could you do it, Petra? Befriend children, just to watch them die?"
"Yes." I lie. "If that meant giving them a better chance of protecting themselves." But I'm not befriending him, and for a moment I hate her for thinking she knows my pain. Tasha Pushkina, you only watch. You don't wield the knife that draws a boy's blood.
She shakes her head sadly. "Killed or killers, it makes no difference. I send children into that area, Petra. Only monsters come back out."
District 1 churns out two Careers, to no one's surprise. He's eighteen, she's seventeen, and from the looks of it they've already begun their own alliance without seeing any of the other competition. They're tall. Strong. Athletic. Xavier Malcovitch doesn't stand a chance.
Undermine them, my experience tells me. Break them apart.
District 2 has its own champions to answer the call. They're sixteen, dark and deadly, and wouldn't you know it, twins. There's no hope for it there. They will be an Alliance, no matter what. Get 1 and 2 to turn on each other. They often do—it makes more sense to ally up initially, sure. But it also makes sense to kill your most skilled opponents in their sleep. Hard to do from outside the camp.
District 3 has a male Career of fifteen. He's small, sly, and I'm guessing dangerous. The clever ones always are. Their female isn't much better. She's seventeen, mousy and seemingly vapid, but the light of her smile doesn't spread through her face and there's cruelty in her bright eyes.
He'll be a loner. She'll seek the Alliance. She might even lead it.
4 boasts two behemoths. They shake hands, cautiously. They're political, calculating, and cool. He's seventeen. She's sixteen. It's looking to be an older crowd.
My age and size won't be an advantage, then.
District 5 fills the screen, and the real Reapings begin. Everyone else were volunteers: no longer. The crowd is restless, but not festive. One by one the children are dragged onto stage and applauded. Parents are weeping. He's fourteen, and his freckled face is petrified.
She's thirteen. She looks about to faint.
District 6's female is tall, wiry, and looks more man than girl. She doesn't blink as the cameras zoom in on her face, and she takes her place on the stand with poise.
Tasha Pushkina studies my face. Asks me what I'm thinking.
I tell her I want the best damn chance there is.
"It all comes down to your story, Petra." She relates from the comfort of her duvan as we watch the Reapings unfold. "But then again, you already know that."
"Forget the story. I need a good stylist, good training. I need Sponsors, Tash. The rest I can handle on my own." A high Training score rather than a low one, then. I need to make an impression, and I need to make it lasting. No hiding behind the shield of clumsiness or ineptitude for me. If it means getting a target painted on my back from all the Careers, so be it.
"I'm not talking about the Games yet, Petra. I'm talking about the television." She gestures onscreen, where a very calm, very poised myself crosses back the great divide between train and platform for a fellow Tribute. We have it on mute, of course. Scoping out the competition is about seeing, not hearing. And Tasha Pushkina is trying desperately to do the job of both Mentor and Chaperone, as well as make up for lost time. "You had to know they'd be watching. Why'd you do it?"
Again I shrug.
"I've never seen anything like it. Neither has the Capitol. People have volunteered for friends or family before, taken their place…but no one in the history of the Hunger Games has ever gone back to help another contestant."
"It had to be done." It's the truth. Someone has to lead the lambs to slaughter. For the last 11 years of my life, it's been me.
"You know what they're saying, though? That for the ugly daughter of a butcher you still have a soft heart."
I glare at her.
"It's a good thing. Unexpected." Pushkina continues, ignoring me. "Honestly, Petra Angelovna, you're brutish, you're older, and you're big. The first thought any other Tribute is going to have is that you're a cold-blooded killer. You're the daughter of a butcher. You have more experience killing than any of the Careers, even. Going back for Malcovitch just threw a wrench into everyone's game. No one knows what to expect from you."
"So you think I should play it up," I state numbly. Petra Angelovna, champion of the weak and helpless. No. I can't. I won't. I am Petra, Stone-heart; and rocks do not die because rocks cannot feel. Panem has killed these children, not me.
Onscreen, a petrified little boy clings precariously to his mother, then accepts my pro-offered hand. Xavier Malcovitch, I can't make you my pet. I have to be strong enough to do the right thing. Either way, my kindness kills him.
But my Chaperone is full of surprises. "No." She returns. "I think you should do whatever the hell you want. It's your Games, your life. Just know that when you did what anyone else would have counted as weakness, you scared the living shit out of every single Mentor, including your own." She grins. "And that's a strength, Petra Angelovna. Use it or not, it's up to you. But I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't so much as make you aware."
...I'll be damned. There's more to Tasha Pushkina than meets the eye.
