Thank you to ClearedPipes, Lisan al Gaib, yoyowhitehole, Very New To This, WinningGlory, Stargirl94, Moonlight Salsa and Grim Apocrypha for the reviews! Your continued support of my work is always appreciated, and I hope to keep the writing flowing! This officially puts us at 3/4 of the way done with introductions and I'm SO ready to get things moving.
That's all for the foreword - though stay tuned for the author's note at the end where I'll give a breakdown of how the story will progress from here!
Let's get into D9 with Gerald and Melisa!
Normalcy.
Most in Panem craved it. Most would have loved a sense of stability in their lives. Levelheaded and loving parents with stable, boring jobs. A career lined up for them whenever they chose to take it - modest, sure, but a guarantee for an income and a good life. A regular, boring school life.
But a select few wanted more. Were destined for more than just milling about the miles and miles and unvaried MILES of wheat and grain that made up the majority of Nine's landscape. They were destined for more than weaving baskets for a paltry sum and more than being the dull, boring, normal laughing stock of the entire school.
At least, that's what Gerald Johnson told himself. Every single day, since he was 10. Right when he woke up.
And today would be no different.
Gerald rolls out of bed at a perfectly reasonable hour. 8:30 AM sharp. Not too late, not too early. Just right. He gives himself about 5 minutes to change and then turns to the cracked mirror in his bedroom - a luxury, he often reminds himself. Who else got to look at themselves, every day? Gerald bets that if everyone else looked like him, they'd be glued to a mirror, too.
He pulls back his hair, the short curls and dirty blonde color a commonality in Nine. His brown eyes were somewhere in the middle of the spectrum - not hazel, not chocolate brown. He stood at about average height and was lean like most in Nine.
Maybe everyone else did look like Gerald.
No, that was nonsense!
As he combs back his hair some more, Gerald begins to speak to his reflection.
"You will NOT spend the rest of your life in these fields." He begins, running his fingers through his hair and detangling his curls.
"You ARE going to be something greater. Your life will be EXCITING." He rubs at the bags under his eyes in an attempt to dispel them. It does not work.
"You'll live a wonderful life after striking it rich. You'll live in a big manor near the center of town have three kids. One will take over your business. One will strike it big and revolutionize the technology behind wheat harvesting. The third... will be a VICTOR! And then when you're old and gray, you and Fiori can-"
Gerald abruptly cuts his own pep-talk short, the smile that had been spreading across his features dropping immediately.
Fiori.
Why had that name come up?
Gerald's mood soured a bit as he recalled their last interaction. Things had been going so well. After three years, Gerald was finally just getting the boy to warm up to him. Everyone even called him 'Fiori's Little Butler!' Wasn't that cute? Mom and dad and Castella always said that it wasn't a good thing - but butlers were always the closest to rich guys like Fiori, weren't they? He relied on Gerald! It was probably those nasty boys he hung around that had told him to cast Gerald aside. They were jealous of him, surely.
And yet it had still hurt like nothing else in this world could. The boy he'd pined for since age 12, tossing him aside 6 years later.
Castella had tried to comfort him, but her own budding relationship with Brice Langely made it hard to take her reassurances seriously. It would all be okay, she said? How could she know? His sister was utterly smitten. And he couldn't even be mad at her for it, because Brice was a nice boy with good parents and a good future.
No, Gerald couldn't afford to be thinking like this. He'd just have to do something grand. Something to show Fiori and Castella and Mom and Dad and the rest of Nine that Gerald Oatley Johnson was not just 'some guy.' He was THE guy. He would be the best Nine had ever seen, some way or another. And everyone would have to eat their words when his name went down in the history books. People would name their kids Gerald now - not just because it was a safe, common name, but it would be in honor of HIM.
He would go on to be great. To be memorable, surely.
He just had to figure out how.
That could wait until tomorrow, though. Gerald had errands to run! Errands that had nothing to do with heading up the road and around the bend to catch a glimpse of Fiori Lucchese. Because Gerald was over that smarmy, manipulative, rich piece of garbage!
"CASTELLA!"
Gerald shouts, throwing the door to his room closed as he rushes out into the main living area. It wasn't much. Their couch? Secondhand. Their television? Barely 16 inches across and constantly grainy. Grainy - that was funny. Because they grew grain in Nine. Gerald makes a mental note to file that one away for later. His arsenal of ever-expanding cheesy jokes had just gained its newest addition.
"What, Gerry?" His sister calls from the kitchen, turning around. She was in the process of making some breakfast. Toasting bread. Boy, oh boy. Bread. How... wonderful.
"I'm headin' off to the market. Gonna spend a bit and grab some fruit as a sweet treat for Reaping's Eve. You need anything else?"
"Just grab me some peaches, if you're able. Oh - and some more flour, please. Ma n' Pa are at work, but I heard Ma' groaning about using the last of her flour last night."
Work. Right. The riveting, mind-boggling task of weaving baskets together for a pittance. They'd seemed content with it, and Gerald had tried and failed for almost 7 years of his life to convince himself that he could be, too. It hadn't worked.
"Gotcha! See ya' in a few."
"Thanks, Gerry. Appreciate it."
"Don't you mean a-peach-iate it?"
The silence that follows stretches on for moments that, to anyone but Gerald Johnson, would have seemed uncomfortable. But he was used to it. She'd respond aaaaany second-
"Just get to the store, Gerry." Castella groans, her index finger and thumb pressed against her forehead.
"See ya'!" Gerald repeats, and then he's out the door. Up the road and around the bend past the house of that snob and into the markets.
Leaving, though, he can't help but wish that the road didn't come to a halt at the market. Wish that he could follow the path on and on, walk for days until he was somewhere new and shiningly brilliant.
Anywhere but Nine.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Rusty spoon knocks against rickety wooden table as Melisa sits and contemplates their life. It was another monotonous, draining day. Most kids would have just been getting out of school. Chatting with their peers. Heading out to the markets to pick up something special for supper. A treat for the stressful day to come.
But stress was normal for someone in Melisa's position. She'd finally (thank the State itself) gotten the twins down for a nap. After hours of wrangling the two and trying to get them to settle down, they'd grown tired of running around the house, knocking over chairs and attempting to eat anything that wasn't tied down. It was an exhausting and paradoxical sort of tedium. They were always on her toes around the twins at this age, and yet every day with them felt the same. Wake up with them. Cook breakfast. Feed them - make sure they ate it all. Watch over them to make sure they didn't eat anything else (like wooden splinters or bits of frayed wiring). Put them down for their nap. Cook dinner. Put them to bed.
It made it worse still that Melisa could find no proper outlet for her frustration. She was well and truly stuck with nothing and nowhere to vent the emotion.
What was she going to do - snap at a pair of toddlers? Maggie and Finch didn't deserve it, and she wasn't some wicked old hag.
Mom? Yeah, right. She'd have to actually see her mom around the house, first. She was working. Always. Gone before Melisa woke up for the day, and home long after she'd fallen asleep. Besides... mom kept the roof above her head. Even if she wasn't around much.
Her friends? Maybe if they bothered to visit. Only a handful still stopped by the regularly see them in the prison she called a house, and they weren't the ones worth being upset with. It was the ones who never came that should earn her ire.
And Sean. Calling him 'Dad' would be giving him too much credit. The bastard had walked his happy ass right on out of the Hayes family's lives in the middle of the night. Not a hair had been out of place, and not a hint was given towards his intentions. He simply disappeared into the District, leaving the people who were supposed to mean the world to him scrambling to find their way.
If he was here, he'd be a great outlet. But he wasn't. He wouldn't be coming back. Not today. Not ever.
But that was fine. Who the fuck needed Sean? The local bar, maybe, or some starry-eyed girl about to have her world destroyed just like Melisa's had been. But not her.
Melisa Hayes had grown up fast. Learned to cook and care and mend and heal for her little siblings. She could handle the work just fine on their own.
That didn't mean they hated having visitors, though. Any second now, actually...
"Knock knock!"
A playful voice sounds from the doorway, the walls and the door itself thin enough that it passed right through. Melisa immediately shoots to attention, wavy dark brown hair flying with the turn of their head. Despite her excitement, she makes sure to push their chair back in quietly - to avoid waking the twins. Once those two got up, the visit would be over and she'd return to babysitting duty. Right now, that sounded worse than death itself.
"Hush up! The kids are sleeping." Melisa's voice is scolding yet tinged with a sort of good-natured humor. Opening the door, she smiles - genuinely smiles - for the first time all day as she lays eyes upon the crowd of three at her door.
"Come in, guys. September, what's in the bag?" Melisa quickly switches from the use of her voice to her hands to communicate as the tallest of the bunch walks in. She had a hard time believing that the two of them were related. At a glance, they were nothing alike. September's hair was darker, their features more angular and their face covered in a smattering of freckles. But the two had become as thick as thieves (though Melisa would never actually steal - she didn't have the time) and they were one of her most frequent visitors.
September isn't the one who answers, though.
Melisa receives a light tap on her shoulder, their eyes flickering to the side where they make contact with Mint Merryweather. He forms his left hand into a fist and flicks the top of it twice. Melisa takes a second to process, and then cocks her head to the side quizzically. Pumpkins..?
Mint then moves his left hand to the sky, splaying his palm outwards with his fingers pointing up. He quickly draws two strokes across his palm with the index finger of his right hand. Paint.
Melisa's eyes light up, and the smile on her face goes from cautious to simply overjoyed.
Painting pumpkin.
Such a simple activity - but when was the last time she'd even been able to think about something so... so frivolous? So fun?
"They grew plenty of them in Eleven this year, so they were cheaper and we managed to snag one." The third and final visitor signs. "I... er, we thought you would enjoy it. Plus you can carve it out and bake the seeds. They're supposed to taste really good after they've been salted. At least... that's what I've read."
"You've read?" September cocks an eyebrow quizzically, a shit-eating grin forming on their face. "What are you, Catrina, the Gourd Gourmet? The Pumpkin Pundit?"
Mint is the first to crack, unable to keep the smile from his face. Catrina is next, stifling a giggle so as not to wake the toddlers she already knew were probably asleep in another room. Even Melisa is unable to stop the swelling feeling in her chest and the parting of her lips into an amused grin.
She lived for moments like these.
Moments that gave her this sense of normalcy again. Moments that let her be Melisa Hayes. Friend. Cousin. Teenager. A girl hanging out with her friends. Not the girl who spent more time as a stand-in mother than a sister.
"Yes, I've read." Catarina huffs, her hands weaving together as she does her best (and fails) to fix an angry expression on her face. "You could do with a book once in a while, too."
"Alright, alright." Melisa steps in between her friends, a palm raised momentarily to each of them as instincts instilled in her over the past 2 years kick in. "Knock it off." She returns to signing. "We have bigger things to talk about."
She pauses her hand movements for just a moment, waiting to draw the attention of the others to her before continuing with her message.
"What are we going to paint on the pumpkin?"
They only had one, after all, and chances like this didn't come around too often.
Melisa had to make every memory count.
"Gerald Johnson!"
Silence ensues. Minutes pass. The crowd is shuffled around, constantly. At least 7 separate people step out into the street. Some of them look resigned. Some shake in terror. Others have their expressions set in hard determination. Any one of them would have done - but there were too many of them to just pick one and be done with it.
"I said... Gerald Johnson? Would a Gerald Johnson please step forward."
The escort upon the stage is quickly losing their patience, their genetically augmented feline mouth turning into what can best be described as a mangled frown. They hadn't undergone the surgery with such an expression in mind.
How dull.
A peacekeeper marches up to the stage, their mask hiding the mild amusement on their face. Law enforcement or not, most of them had been raised in the Districts. It was always amusing to see a Capitolite squirm a bit.
"Mx., logistics has just run the numbers. We have 17 Gerald Johnsons eligible for this year's reaping."
"Seventeen?" The escort's eyebrows raise in shock, their implanted whiskers twitching in mild annoyance.. "My, what a common name. How boring that is. Shall we just draw for someone more exciting, then?"
Boring. It was always boring. Every single fucking thing was boring if it related to Gerald, wasn't it?
"There should be barcodes on the back of these things. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes there's confusion like this. Gerald's a common name here, and every District's got a few Johnson families milling about. Should be a scanner under your desk that'll tell you which is the right one."
No. Not this time. Everyone who'd ever laughed. Cracked jokes. Written him off. They'd all be left in the shadows today, while he shone in the spotlight.
"Oh, perfect. In that case-"
Boring. Tedious. Dull. Unremarkable. Normal. Plain. Ordinary. Average. Bland. Uninteresting.
"WAIT!"
All eyes turn towards a boy who, for the first time in his life, is noticed. His thin build and short, curly dirty blonde hair are no longer just common features. His brown eyes, possessed by the majority of Nine, are no longer shared. They belong to that year's male tribute from Nine, one of one. There would be nobody else like him for another year entirely. He was someone, now. Someone who would leave the monotony of the Grain District behind.
Gerald's mind is rushing, roaring, drowning out any rational thought telling him to step back in line.
"That's probably my slip. My name's Gerald Johnson. Gerald Oatley Johnson, if it helps to remember me compared to the others. Sorry 'bout the wait. I couldn't decide if I should step up - but I've made my choice now. I'm the one you're looking for!"
...
There's a shriek to their left, but Melisa hardly registers it in face of the utterly astounding events unfolding right in front of her. Was this kid sane? Her jaw hangs slack as he marches up the stairs, seemingly as casual as can be. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about him - but that doesn't even matter. Right now, her eyes can't leave him, because what the fuck was his problem? He'd just signed his own death warrant. Did he even realize that?
Melisa watches as the Peacekeeper on stage moves to intercept him, only to be shooed away by the escort, who seems eager to play along.
"What a relief! Seems you're just the one we needed. It takes a brave young man to step up and honor his District!"
Bullshit. Melisa thinks, but the boy on stage seems to be eating it up, a grin spreading across his face with each complimented bestowed upon him.
"I think we've got ourselves a star this year! Well, Gerald Oatley Johnson - let's meet your lovely partner, shall we?" The escort purrs, their hand already reaching into the bowl for the female tributes.
"Melisa Hayes!"
Melisa's breath hitches in her throat and the world seems to go quiet around her. Unlike her predecessor, there's no confusion - no commonality in the names. The crowd parts around her as if they've contracted some sort of deadly, contagious virus. She's singled out. Immediately.
It takes considerably much less time for Melisa to be dragged up to the stage. And dragged is literal. Their legs have locked up on them, tears already welling up in the corners of their eyes.
Who was going to watch the kids now?
Would mom have to work more? Would she work less, now? One less mouth to feed?
What about September? They were like Melisa's other half, more a sibling than a cousin. How would they take this?
Catarina? Mint? What would they do? Were they sad, too? Scared for her? Melisa didn't have many people in her life, but that made it hurt even more to be ripped away from the few who had stuck around for her in the harshest years of their life.
By the time she recovers her thoughts, they've been propped up on stage, staring out into the crowd with wide brown eyes like a mouse caught in the beam of a flashlight out in one of Nine's many fields. That was how she felt, too - small, insignificant. Her entire body trembled with a mixture of terror and rage at the unfairness of it all, tears welling up in the corner of her eyes.
Why her? She'd done her best for Maggie and Finch. For mom. It wasn't fair. They took her away from it all. But Sean would still get to roam free.
The even split of terror and rage begins to subside, fear being consumed by raw anger. Melisa barely registers her own hand in that of the smiling, oblivious Gerald. With each passing second, she begins to tremble more severely.
But walking into the Justice building, the look in their eyes is hardened. Still afraid, yes - but furious. Determined.
Determined to reclaim her life. One way or another, she would no longer be strapped down by the burden of her life in Nine. Money and food wouldn't be an issue anymore. She would live as herself. Melisa Hayes, for as long as she possibly could
Whether that meant coming home in a crown or in a coffin was still yet unclear.
AAAND THATS D9! This was another of the more challenging districts - I didn't really know how to tackle these guys at first, but I think it turned into something I ended up liking. Gerald's reaping situation was possibly one of the most unique I've been presented and when we got to that point I was really hitting my stride.
As for Melisa, halfway through writing this I realized that I'd never actually written someone who was entirely deaf like her friend, Mint. We have Acacia, who's deaf in one ear, but obviously she can still hear out of the other. It presented a pretty unique challenge for me because I find myself often describing tone to convey a spoken message and gestures to accentuate it, and I had to find a way around that this time because obviously they're not just going to speak and leave Mint hanging. That would be lame. I hope it turned out okay!
Thoughts on Melisa and Gerald? Predictions, ideas, anything really for our D9 tributes?
Also - we're getting a bit wordy here, but I did say I'd lay out the plans for the next bits of the story, so they will be as follows down below!
-Finish with Intros (10/11/12)
-Short Reaping Recap chapter w/ Head GM Gavia and Io to bridge into goodbyes/train rides
-Goodbyes (Will be kept short, 6 districts per chapter with mini-segments for each individual)
-Train rides (all 12 will be in one chapter with very short segments for each, taking a snippet from the entire ride)
And then it'll be officially pre-games time woooooooooo!
That's all! See you next time for D10, with one of my personal favorite tributes among them...
Until then,
Logangster out.