Chapter 1: The Mockingjay

Chapter Text

Spelt kicked all the bedding away from his sleek body and left behind a tangle of sheets and a fair-faced girl, panting, arm over her eyes as if the effort had blinded as well as exhausted her. He was eighteen, tall, muscular, raw, rough and beautiful. She was nineteen - small and freckled, glowing with her sparkly makeup as well as with her sweat. She was not his first girl; he was not her first boy, yet their pairing had felt new and dangerous and unprecedented.

"Spelt," she said. "Don't go yet."

"Gotta meet my mentor. Look - uh - it's been - you know …."

"I can't wait to do it again."

"Odds aren't good there, Cinnamon."

"Don't call me that - that's such a stupid name. You know my name is Sienna."

He looked down at her, squinting. What's in a moment like this for a boy like him? A week of heavy flirting, while she held up fabrics against his naked body and pinned the hems of the tunics his stylist had designed for him. Her fingers brushing against his thighs. Her long, painted nails so unnatural, so exotic, he had had no choice but to fixate on them. His girlfriend back home bit her own nails down to the quick. There was something so insanely flawless about this girl, except for the splash of reddish freckles that had inspired her nickname - and it was so in contrast to the squalor he had come from and the blood and dirt that awaited him - that he had come to need, utterly need her. It was more intense than love (as he knew it), it was far more intense than lust. Within it was contained his gratitude for her kindness and her own flattering desire of him. And within it was also contained his urge to defile and defame her and everything she stood for, as a member of the tribe that was sending him to slaughter. So, he shrugged. "Sienna, then. Sounds strange to say."

"Get used to it."

"Girl," he replied in frustration, "you know you are like to never see me again."

She shook her head. "No, Spelt, you're going to win and come back here. Look at you - you're a warrior! You can't die! Who can touch you? You're a beast, and quick and clever - and you are too beautiful to die. The sponsors will adore you." She was almost crying by the end of this speech, and he was a boy and half convinced by her. He was stronger, fitter, faster than almost anyone in the Games.

"OK, then," he said. "Deal." And she was half convinced by this.

Spelt finally ran out of the room and up two flights of stairs to the roof of the building. It was a hot and sticky night. His mentor was leaning against the railing, looking down at the City. There was nothing like this where they came from - the largest city in their part of the world was a run-down collaboration of old stone buildings and ramshackle rows of housing, half-illuminated by oil lamp and half by luck. Here, the street lights, car lights, house lights all outshone even the moon and stars.

"You know what will be the death of you, boy?" said his mentor, without even turning around.

"No one's killing me," said Spelt.

His mentor turned around, then; he was only a few years older than the tribute, but his experiences had told on him. He had a gash down his face and a hook in place of his right hand. But it was his eyes, really; they didn't look quite like human eyes to Spelt. They were cloudy and vacant and even when he smiled, he never looked anything but grim. "Your lack of self control. It will take you every ounce of control and concentration to survive these Games. Especially with the sheer volume of the competition."

"Very helpful," said Spelt resentfully. "Why don't you at least tell me what you told Bores. I know you like him better, but you're supposed to be helping both of us."

"Stay alive," he was told, shortly. Spelt turned and left at that and his mentor watched him go, his brow furrowed and his expression somewhat regretful. He didn't know how to help the kid, and he desperately wanted to. That sort of desperation was just poison to someone like him.

"I like that advice," said a voice, suddenly breaking the shadows of the rooftop. A slender boy rose slowly up from where he had been sitting in the darkness under the roof ledge. "Best advice I've heard all week."

The sarcastic look on the boy's face was evident even in the dim light. He had become well known for it over the past week. "Haymitch."

"At your service," said the boy. "So sorry, not having a real mentor myself, I've forgotten all the mentors' names. And you are …?"

"Chaff," said the older boy, smiling despite himself.

Haymitch knew he should sleep.

Unlike Spelt, he was a creature of discipline. In his clandestine adventures around District Twelve - scrounging, stealing, trapping his food - he had taught himself when to stop and when to run, when to breathe and when to hold, when to take and when to give. He knew the weight of a person by the sound of a footprint; he knew the distance of a person by the sound of a breath. He knew the benefit of sleep to the healing of a body, especially one deprived. This week had brought him a new challenge - getting used to his body when it was fully sated. It didn't move or rest in the same way.

He was also, of course, anxious, and had been exhaustively keeping up the pretense of not being anxious. It was taking a lot of energy. But he would never, never show the Capitol anything but the contempt it deserved. He was sixteen - sixteen! - and yet against all odds he had made a life for himself and his family after his father had succumbed to drink. He was good with numbers and, once school and the reapings were up, he had been slotted to work in the foreman's offices at the mine, and not below ground - something he knew would break his body. Stealing food would no longer be necessary. The most beautiful girl in District Twelve had pledged herself to him - an unofficial acknowledgement of their foregone engagement - and he would be able to provide for her. He had everything figured out. Someone like him, he thought, should be celebrated by the Capitol, not put to death. Someone who could work the system, even starting out with every disadvantage. Turns out, the whole system was wasteful and stupid and he could not get over that fact. He despised them more than they despised him. It was his only thing to cling to.

Now, however, he was letting them win. They were in his head, taking away the sleep he needed.

"Go to sleep, 'Mitch," grunted Pavo, from the other bed in the room. "You're bugging me."

"I'm just sitting here."

"You're twitching." Pavo was a year Haymitch's junior, but looked twelve. A more typical miner's boy, he had come to the Capitol scrawny, underfed and totally unprepared for the bounty of food and attention waiting for them here. They weren't friends - Haymitch's illegal activities made him cautious of keeping close acquaintances; no one really could be trusted - but they were both Seam, which bound them in a certain kind of kinship. Now, he was about to die - Haymitch could tell this kid would be one of the first to go - and it just absolutely sucked.

He left their room and wandered out into the District Twelve suite. He hated the place - it was so pointlessly rich, as if there was no other reason for it than to remind the tributes how worthless they were. He hated waste like that. A sofa didn't need to be more than functional, a place to sit. This sofa looked like it could tell you everything about the opera and sniff at your ignorance.

He wanted more night air, but didn't want to return to the roof - everyone seemed to be rendezvousing there tonight. So he made for the balcony. He was too late - already sliding the door open - to notice the girl who was already there. He suppressed a groan. "Hey - uh - Marigold."

"Maysilee," she gently corrected. "Hi yourself, Haymitch."

"How's Ellanda?"

"Sleeping, poor thing. You know her?"

"All us from the Seam know each other, sweetheart," he replied sourly. "She lives two doors down from me."

She touched her hair. "Don't let me stop you from enjoying the view; come out of the doorway and look."

"I've already been outside …."

"Just look, already."

He shrugged and went over to the railing. You could slightly hear the buzz of the force field that kept them from attempting to climb down - or jump - the thirteen stories of the Training Center. This thing had intrigued him all week. Once he heard - or thought he heard - the buzz cut out, and he had stuck his hand out, and managed to straighten his arm for a second before the force field made it jerk back. He would swear it. But he had told no one.

He looked down now, careful to keep his head clear of the buzzing electrical wall. Way down below them, the streets were nearly empty now, but they were flooded with the silver lights of the night. There was a solitary figure standing at the entrance of the Training Center, looking up just as they were looking down - but from this distance it was hard to tell if he was actually looking at them. He held a guitar or some similar instrument and, after a while, he started playing it and a few melancholy notes drifted up to them.

"Is he - is he - serenading someone in the Training Center?" Haymitch asked.

Maysilee laughed. "That was my thought too!" she said.

"Oh, fuck me," said Haymitch in disgust.

"He actually thinks someone here could possibly care about him."

"I mean - maybe it's you."

"Gross."

"Maybe he's rich, you never know." He turned around and looked at the girl curiously. He had been so focused on his own business this week that he hadn't really taken any notice of her. Their dumb stylist had smothered anything distinct about her - the one Townie in the group of tributes - under the gold lame' mining costumes they had worn for the parade. She had worn a headband to keep her unruly blonde hair down during the training days. At tonight's interviews, she had worn a simple green dress. So, she hadn't been shown off to full advantage this week, which would have been a pity had he been rooting for her offscreen. Now, she wore a black turtleneck and jeans and looked more thirty than sixteen. There was a glint of gold at her breast and his eyes widened as he studied it - it was a gold pin, a circle enclosing a mockingjay.

He knew that symbol, of course. He stopped the impulsive words that came to him and took a few breaths before noting: "Nice - uh - pin."

"It's been in the family a while," she replied, so smoothly and without hesitation that he wondered whether she was even aware of its significance.

"Surprised they were OK with you bringing it into the arena," he said roughly. "I mean - no offense - odds are that you won't make it back."

"Odds are," she agreed. "But they'll send it back to my family, unless someone poaches it off of me, I guess. It doesn't matter. I wanted to show it off and there's no one back home to show it off to."

Haymitch's mind whirled at this, but he shook his head - and shook off the implications of what she was saying. "The arena's no place to make fashion statements. All you can care about is how to stay alive - all day, every day, every minute."

She shrugged. "Sure."

But it took him a long time to go to sleep that night. The encircled mockingjay was a symbol of the late, great District Twelve rebellion. You sometimes saw it even now, inked into the water tank, etched into the school desks, spray painted on the rock walls in the mine. It had been some time since its active use - he had been three years old or so the last time that the round loaves of bread with the symbol burnt into them had come to the house, alerting his father to a meeting. But the kids who had, like him, grown up with parents in the last significant underground movement, had preserved the symbol as a general statement of defiance. Against school, against curfews: garden variety rebellion.

The symbol itself went all the way back to the Dark Days. Originally, the circled bird had been the jabberjay - the Capitol spy mutt bird. The rebels had learned the tricks of this bird and had created tokens with its image stamped on it to alert each other when they were around. Later, when its scion, the mockingjay, had replaced it and proved itself to be friendly, the image on the tokens - then later on bread, which could be passed around and disposed of more safely - had evolved. Maysilee Donner's family - bookbinders and archivists - were fairly well off, which was an automatic red flag for him: so many of the better-off families had cooperated with the Capitol back then, and were no friends to the children of the rebellion. But not all Townie families …. He stopped his thoughts, punched his pillow angrily, and tried again to go to sleep. The rebellion had never accomplished shit; had only driven his father to drink and got a lot of people killed. None of its old, dead symbols mattered any more and only a silly girl could possibly think otherwise.