AN - This collection of one shots contains separate pieces. They do not tie to each other or to any of my other writing unless specifically noted.

From a Career District

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to The Hunger Games.

We live in a realm that is filled with contradictions. How we look at the contradictions is, in and of itself, a contradiction. Allow me to be more explicit. There is the Capitol. There are the Districts. They are two distinct entities that comprise a larger whole, but we are always to remember that there is a distinction. They are the conquerors; we are the conquered. They issue orders; we obey them. They are to be served; we are to do the serving. One would think that such clearly delineated lines would leave us with an us and them sort of a view of the situation, but thinking like that is something that is most decidedly discouraged. There is never supposed to be an "us" when it comes to the Districts. Even though so many parts of our lives are divided into Capitol and District designations, the Capitol does everything in its power to ensure that we in the Districts never view the other Districts as being on the same side.

I imagine that it would be their preference that we never view the situation as having any sides at all. It would work best for them if we could be convinced to see nothing but the Capitol and what it wants as the only available option. There is a lot of lack of understanding of basic human nature displayed by a significant number of people in the Capitol, but falling into the trap of thinking that the previously mentioned preference is actually a viable option has yet to occur. They, instead, offer us the opportunity to view the situation through the view of having sides under the condition that we view it as our side versus that of the other Districts.

I have often wondered if that was not the main point of the introduction of the Games. There were any number of ways in which the Capitol could have exacted punishment, but most of those would have involved the Districts suffering together. That, in and of itself, is a uniting experience. If there is one thing upon which we can all agree, I think it is the fact that the last thing the Capitol wanted in the wake of the rebellion was any sort of a sense of unitedness on the part of the Districts. That was one lesson that seems to have stuck with them over the ensuing decades (when so many others seem to have drifted away from them) - united Districts cause them trouble.

The Games manage to pit the Districts against each other even in the midst of something being inflicted on the Districts as a collective. There are deaths and gore and plenty of opportunities for inter District resentment to build up within the confines of the Capitol's Treaty terms. We will not even touch on the additional factor of the food rations that go along with winning (another way to view the children on the screen as less individuals by making them more the physical representation of whether fewer children in your District will go hungry the next year). People have long memories when it comes to their children (it is a pity that the signers of the Treaty did not seem to have much in the way of forethought when it came to theirs). The Games reduce the individual Districts to caricatured representatives on a screen. It becomes less about the children as individuals and more about them as a symbol.

You can tell that in the streets after the Games have ended for another year. It is never Rhee Waller or Cody Binns who killed so and so. It is always the girl from Five or the boy from Three. It sinks into people's memories that way, and we have decades of memories. The names fade (if we ever bothered to learn them to begin with); the places do not. Seven killed the boy you thought was going to win. Ten got lucky and avoided that trap that ended up with your District's partners losing each other. We see them as their District, and we all keep a bizarre tally in the back of our minds of which District was responsible for what.

We have decades of collective recollections of why this District cannot be trusted or why that District plays dirty and on and on and on in an endless loop of a lack of unitedness that probably causes the puppet string moving tiers of power in the Capitol to fall asleep at night with smiles on their faces.

They do not even end it there - there are always Capitol pushed divisions even within the Districts to make certain that each District itself has only so much unitedness to go around - the kind that gets all used up thinking derogatory things about the other Districts and not plotting against the larger problem. There are divisions woven within divisions. The Reaping itself is yet another attempt at creating divisions. It is designed to push thoughts of my family's safety over yours and your children's sacrifice instead of mine. All of these designed divisions lead to another truth about life in this place.

The one thing that you can count on in Panem is the fact that you will always hear about exactly what the Capitol wants you to hear about. There is a carefully orchestrated secrecy about other Districts and what goes on in them, but if there is anything potentially divisive to be pointed out, then you better believe that that information will somehow make it through the layers of filters that everything in this place is subjected to before it is allowed to be dispersed. They always know exactly what they are doing. They always know exactly what type of a response they are trying to provoke. In a lot of ways, it is a game that they never stop playing. (I do not think that they can stop playing. I think their carefully constructed version of the world collapses around them if they do.)

Therefore, it makes no difference that we theoretically should know very little about what any of the other Districts think of us. We do not travel. We do not receive visitors. We do not send letters or make phone calls that go beyond our own boundaries. We do not communicate with other Districts. We see only fleeting glimpses of them on our screens. That level of a lack of interaction should lead to us knowing nothing (and presuming to know nothing) about those who dwell within the boundaries of Districts labeled with another number. It does not work that way. We still know exactly what the outlier Districts call us behind our backs. They call us Careers. That should not mean much. We call ourselves Careers, but that information is still permitted to us for the explicit purpose of causing wounds to the nonexistent relationship we have with the people that we will likely never encounter.

Career is an acceptable term here. It is a word like any other that we would use to name a teacher or a shop owner. It is what the children who go into training are known as because that is what they are. Training for the Games, knowing how to win the Games, and having their lives potentially end with the Games is their chosen path in life. It is their career. We say the word with the weight it deserves - no less, no more. It tells you what someone does. The other Districts would have you believe that it tells you what someone is.

When outside Districts use the word, they do not say it at all. At least, it is not any configuration of vocalization that I would define under the connotations of say. It is more like spitting - as if the word has some sort of a bad taste to it that they are trying to expel from their mouths by exhaling it as quickly as possible. Ask me how everyone in my District knows that fact even though the vast majority of us have never been beyond our District boundaries. You do not need to ask? Good for you. You catch on quickly. We all know because they want us to know. We always know what they want us to know, and we know it with the level of certainty with which they want us to know it. There are times when whispered rumors serve their purposes better - this is not one of those times. They want this to be clearly understood with no doubt.

Most people do not even know why they know. It does not occur to most to wonder why we would be aware of such a thing when everything else besides basic this is where such and such comes from information about other Districts is kept strictly confidential. They play their information dealing hand well on the subject. The passing on of the information is not overt. It is not pushy or shoved in our faces. It simply is there in the background seeping in to our conversation and our daily lives until we all accept it as a fact that is without any questioning of why or even of why we are all privy to the information because most of us never really bother to question something that just seemingly always has been.

It was a masterstroke of brilliance really. Someone along the line was a strategic artist of the highest order. Plant a subtle suggestion and reinforce it over the course of decades and you get exactly what you want - a population with such inherent distrust and lack of respect for each other that the concept of ever working with the "them" in the equation would be so foreign that any opportune moment would pass before it could be overcome. They managed to make the concept of unitedness alien to us all even as they remind us that we were once united with every public reading of the Treaty. It is yet another of those contradictions that I mentioned earlier. Yes, there was definitely a master strategic artist at work at some point in time. You will never convince me otherwise. It was all quite impressively accomplished - too impressively accomplished to not have been planned.

I wonder sometimes what happened to that person (or persons) who laid out those paths for the Capitol to follow. I wonder if he or she or they got to go live out a quiet life or lives. I wonder if cleverness led to demise when someone in power started to worry about where else such skills could be applied. I may not live in the Capitol, but I do not have to be present to understand what types of things go on when people have the longevity of power that politicians in the Capitol seem to enjoy.

I am digressing. Let's not get sent off track by the odd paths that my thoughts have traveled. I was explaining how well the Capitol has managed to seed distrust between the Districts. I was giving examples.

Don't get me wrong - just because I can see the bigger picture for what it is does not mean that I do not play into their maneuvering just as much as the average District resident. I have my own District prejudices. It is difficult not to have them. Abstract theory is all well and good, but I still have to live here. I still have to watch the Games just like everyone else. I still have to live with the Games just like everyone else.

I, to be perfectly blunt, do not give much credence to the generally whispered status of monsters that the other Districts like to use to label my District's children. It is funny how people like to throw that name onto whatever it is that they would not be willing to do themselves. I could turn it around on a District like Eleven, and they would not have the faintest understanding of what I meant. They only see the term Career through the lens of working with the Capitol. They think their lack of volunteering in Twelve is some sort of a sign of occupying a higher moral ground. They think the way that the children from Eight clearly have no idea how to defend themselves is some sort of a badge of aloof from it all honor.

If you will indulge me for a moment, I have a suggestion for you. Pay attention to the District tapes of the Reaping - not to the actual Reaping but to the panning over the gathered crowd before it begins. Focus on the twelves. The ones in the outlier Districts look pale with shadows under their eyes. They have not been sleeping. They have been having nightmares. Lots of them are shaking. They are scared. They are worried. They think that the name that is drawn out of the bowl is going to be theirs. They think that they are going to die. The twelve year olds in the Career Districts do not share those fearful expressions. The ghosts of nightmares are not peeking out from behind their eyes. There is a reason that that is so. It is not because those of us in the Career Districts are monsters who have forgotten how to feel. It is because we handle the Games differently here. The other Districts do not recognize that handling for what it is. They only despise us for it.

I submit for the record that their children still have to go. Their children still stand in their squares with their names written on slips of paper. Their children are still called up on a stage. Their children are still dressed up like dolls gone horribly wrong and paraded through the streets of the Capitol. It does not matter how aloof or morally superior they want to pretend that they are - their children still have to go. Each year they serve up two sacrifices on a platter just like the rest of us. Their aloof disdain, their disgust with us for "playing along," and their sense of somehow being better because they do not are ultimately meaningless. All of their pretenses end with their children boarding a train to go to the Capitol just like every other District.

Do you know what it is that all of their attitude gets them? It gets them dead children. It gets all of us dead children. Do you know what the difference is? Our dead children are not twelve years old. Our dead children actually had a chance to not come back as dead children. They cannot say the same. Who really deserves the label of monster in this scenario?

The true answer to that question is, of course, that the label belongs to the ones who are demanding the sacrifice of our children in the first place. At least, that is what I think on most days. There are times when it seems to me that the label also belongs on all of our ancestors - the ones who decided that it was acceptable to sign that blasted Treaty in the first place. They can both have it. There is plenty of guilt (and blood) to go around.

It is, however, a little difficult to be sympathetic to a group of people who allow twelve year old little girls and boys to board that train every year with no more than a few sniffles and vague gasping noises offered in a mockery of protest. Twelve year olds from the Career Districts do not get on that train - ever. We may send children to the Games just like everyone else, but we send ones that are on the nearly adult side of children. We send ones who know enough to have a chance at coming back. We send ones who are choosing to go.

The other Districts can have their illusions of moral uprightness. They can keep their contempt. They can throw out the word "Career" as if it is making them dirty to even say it. They can mutter about how we are lapdogs for the Capitol. They can turn up their noses and judge and play right into the Capitol's hands with their distrust and disdain and inability to see beyond the training and the volunteering that they cannot bring themselves to understand because they do not want to understand it.

I will reciprocate. I will hold to my unwillingness to understand standing idly by while the names of twelve year olds are drawn. I will hold to my distaste for leaving children unprepared as people pretend that leaving their young to willful ignorance is some sort of protest instead of a means of attempting to avoid facing the reality of the situation. I will continue to find the images of teary children being ripped from their families as their Districts allow the Capitol to dictate to them revolting.

I will keep our way of doing things here in the Career District where I am proud to claim residence. I will keep our training centers that offer our children the opportunity to learn. I will keep the skills that we grant them to use when the trains come back to claim two more (and make no mistake about it, the trains will come back to take two more whether our children are prepared or not). I will keep the calm twelve year olds gathered in our squares who are not shaking with terror because they already know they will not be going. I will keep the knowledge that all thinking people in our District hold to of our subtle slap to the Capitol and its Games with the fact that they do not sweep in and take our children from us. We stand firm every year and tell them which children they can and cannot have.

We play their Games, and that, I think, is what the other Districts find so distasteful. They want to pretend that protesting the fact that they are playing somehow negates the fact that they are playing. They still have to play. We all have to play. We just choose to play well. We choose to play so well that the ones running the Games do not even see that we are out playing them. We cloak our defiance and our objections within the confines of the Games, and the Game runners end up showering us with prizes for it. We openly flaunt their rules and guidelines, and they think that we are doing them a favor.

It is really quite funny if you have a rather morbid sense of humor. I happen to not be in possession of one of those, but that does not diminish the sense of District pride I feel on each occasion that the Capitol chooses a name from one of those glass balls and find their choice shoved back in their face. They never get to pick, and I do not think that they even realize that that is what it is that we have accomplished. They do not choose; we choose. They do not take; we send. It may be a subtle distinction (one that is certainly lost on the other Districts sitting in judgment and sneering down their noses), but it is a distinction. It is one that we wear as a badge of honor. It is one that we cling to as the demonstration of what it is we have chosen to be in the midst of the trap of the terms of the Treaty.

We accept the designation of Careers. We embrace it. We do not blush or turn down our eyes or any of those other things that the ones spitting out the word would expect from us in reaction if they did not believe we were devoid of exhibiting what they would consider appropriate reactions. We have no reason to be ashamed. We have no reason to cringe. We know what we have chosen, and we are comfortable with the ways that our choices play out as the years cycle from Reaping to Games to Victory Tour to a repetition of all three. I wonder if the others in Districts who choose differently ever sat down and thought the complexity of the situation through without their bias blinders on if they would be able to leave their time of reflection saying the same.

There is someone in one of them I am sure that thinks of these things just as I do. Someone sees the way the Capitol plays us and knows that there is no reason for the people in that District to know the names they are called by those from the Career Districts. He or she understands the bias and the deliberate division. We will never meet each other - things in Panem do not work that way. We will have our similar thoughts in our similar lives (despite the Capitol's best efforts to convince us that there is very little similar between us). We may casually mention those thoughts in dribs and drabs as we feel out who is or is not receptive. We will not say too much or share too deeply because that would just be dangerous, but the mentions we make to some will eventually be repeated to others.

The thoughts and ideas will continue to circulate even after we are gone. There will come a day when it will be the right time for thinking them. There will come a day when the Capitol overplays its hand or something else rallies people's attention and the knowledge that the Districts really are not as separate from each other as the Capitol would like us to be will be important to remember.

The question will be whether or not we will remember it in time.

If we do not, the moment will pass. Things will continue on much as they currently are. The thoughts will not disappear - ideas never do. They will still dwell in the back of minds and be whispered here and there. They will bide their time until we come back around to the place where they are ready to be heard again.

If we do remember in time, then that will be a different story. It will be a story different enough that I cannot even begin to speculate what it will look like as it plays out. Having knowledge is not a guarantee. Even the use of knowledge is not a guarantee. Things will look different, but that is as much as I can commit to declaring. Everything else depends on too many different things for me to attempt to try to pin down what separates one outcome from another.

It might turn out that things will be much worse. It might turn out that things will be much better. Things are unpredictable like that. Decisions matter. Thoughts matter. People and their individual biases and whether they can work around them matter. Everything blends together to lead things to an end that could have been different if any number of things along the way had gone differently in their turn.

I am rambling again. I apologize for that. My speculations matter little. I doubt I will ever see them either confirmed or denied. The important thing is that I have made my point. We (the Districts) do not see each other as people with whom we could work. We see each other as people that we cannot understand - that we do not want to understand. The Capitol intends it so, and they reap the benefits of it even when we know that is what they are doing.