Jackson Tanner, during the war, was never anything special. Oh sure, he was a boy who'd spent his fair share of time waiting in the caves, sitting in his house, hoping this would all be over soon. From living on the great dust bowl of District 10, helping out on the ranches, to cowering in the hovel of some southerner. Trying his best, with Ma and Daisy, to avoid the bombs and gunfire and murder. Wherever they were from, north or south of the River, those who didn't want to fight had some kind of kinship. A kinship that meant, when Jackson lived in Settlement Ten, a sprawled town on the banks of the great River, he may have excluded some darker children from the games he and his friends played, but he was never a bully again.
And now the war was over, and Jackson had been thrown into a new kind of battle. Because instead of executions, after the war for the most part those who fought provided a different kind of sacrifice to the Capitol.
Their children. From the second games, the mayor said, it would be random. For the first, the eligible candidates were those who had been born of the rebellious families. All records scoured, notes taken, even as he'd panicked.
It wasn't even his parents. That was the worst part, not his parents who'd caused this. Rather, his sister. Daisy Tanner, 18 and still with that mean streak that had defined their growing up together. After Da died, she'd taken to the streets. Killed a couple of peacekeepers. Not a lot, but with many of the more vicious rebels and their families running to the deserts and mountains, the odds certainly didn't favour him.
But that was in the past. The present was standing in a circle, looking at the 23 other 'tributes'. Such an ugly word to describe children.
He felt it all. Sweat dripping from dark hair into brown eyes, running down the scar on his cheek from where a stray shard of shrapnel had slid along his cheek. The dust in the air, newly sand filled arena smelling of something he couldn't place. Trembling on the podium with the rest of them, a glowing line in the sand tracing a circle around him. Land mines, he'd been told, and neither he nor anybody else was willing to test that.
Mara Wheeler, from Two. Her daddy had detonated the explosives that had taken the lives of Two's mayor, his escort and some scion of the Crane Family, scouting two out for the new hotels they wanted, thinking the war was over. She'd exploded into tears, ugly fat droplets, the second she'd been shoved up onto the pedestal by a peacekeeper.
Willard Hoff, from Five. Jackson had heard of him, because Willard had taken the power into his own hands, when he'd cut a wire with shears and cut power to Ten, Two, Nine and the Capitol. Caught a week later, and paraded on the television he'd shut off for three hours. What was visible now was the burns, the damage that had been done running up his arms, neck, face. Had left him blind, even as he stood stoically at the podium.
Layla Forrester, from Twelve. Not that godforsaken place had done much, a little sporadic gunfire. Who knew why she'd been chosen, why the hollow-cheeked, olive girl was standing on a pedestal.
Daisy. His sister. He still remembered the horror when his name was called, even as Mam had looked at her boy and girl standing on state and had fallen, a peacekeeper shouldering through the crowds. He didn't see what happened to her. Never would know whether Mam was alive, he expected.
Such a shame.
A pistol fired. Nobody moved. Mara was still crying, so were the boy from Four and little girl from Nine. He recognized her. The boy from Eleven retched, a thin liquid from his mouth but nothing else.
They waited. A voice came over a drone, hovering.
"Tributes. We would like to remind you that all of you have loved ones. And would like you to know that they are safe, and we hope that they will continue to be so."
That was all the stimulus they needed. It was family that had taken them through the dark days, family that had prevented any abreaction. Family that led to Layla stepping off her podium, the others all watching as she grabbed a knife. Hand calm, even as she stabbed herself with it, blood spilling across arena sand as she screamed. Screaming that seemed to last an eternity.
That was all the stimulus some of them needed. Daisy, Mara, others, running forward, grabbing weapons. The girl from Four, as pretty as anyone could be in the boots and rags she was wearing, grabbing a sword and waving it awkwardly. Two's boy, hand reaching down as he grabbed a broad hammer, before slamming it down on Layla's head. Smashing it like when Jackson had stepped on a snail.
Mara was cut down by her own district partner. Smashed down, rather, as she scrabbled at the walls keeping them in, begging to be let out until the metal of the hammer swung down, drawing a wail before she felt a second crushing blow.
It was a daze, even as Daisy, spear in hand, ran towards him, chasing him to the edge of the arena and handing him a knife.
"Stay here, Jacky. We can get through this, yeah?"
She smiled at him, a proper smile. He nodded mutely, privately thinking it was a shame that it took this for a family bond to grow properly. And they watched, Daisy with spear pointing outwards.
As the fisher girl and quarry boy circled each other, her and him. As he swung, missed. As she stepped into his wake, sword came down, and suddenly the quarry boy wasn't enough to worry about. As the One boy, his blonde hair now dusty and covered in things Jackson didn't want to think about, stabbed the Nine girl, screaming as he brought down the spear, holding it like a knife just behind the head.
Until the fisher girl slipped down with a spear in her throat, and there were only two. Him, and Daisy. And they'd roughhoused enough times to know there'd only be one outcome, after all she'd always been bigger. As Daisy smiled, and took the fisher's sword, and raised it with that smile when she'd come back from killing, when she'd taken his favourite toy as a child.
When she mouthed an apology for those, as she brought the sword down, blade nicking Jackson's ear before sliding into her chest with a soft hiss. His games lasted 44 minutes, and he hadn't killed. That, he could promise.
The feat, on both sides, was never repeated.
He wasn't feted as a hero, or welcomed home by cheering crowds. He was loaded onto a train with the reinforcements to the peacekeeping garrison in Ten. Left the doors with one more bruise than he went in with, into the presence of a sobbing woman. A distant family member, an aunt or something. Jackson wasn't really sure, he never was, but he heard very well what was being said.
Ma Tanner was dead. Ma was dead.
His world spun like a top, and when the top stopped it was far too late for him to right it. He never had time any more, no more school. He'd won the Games, only bad children had been picked. That was what grandparents whispered to grandchildren, teachers told their classes Did that mean he was the worst of them all?
He never knew. He did know it meant a week after being readmitted, the headmistress had come out and looked with brown eyes, darker than his, at him. Sighed, apologised. Apologised again, before breaking the news. He was never welcome back to school, after the Games she'd had more than a few complaints from parents. It wasn't right for him to be at school, even if he'd not killed. It wasn't right for a victor to stand among nice young boys and girls. Instead, he could make up for whatever slight he'd dealt to the Capitol by working in the settlement. A nice cushy job, as jobs went, on the banks of the River. Policing it, making sure nobody fouled the water that provided for everyone. A cushy job, and one that Ma's old friends had pulled in favours to pull for him.
He was fired three weeks later for leaving his job. Nobody who needed to knew what he was doing, and nobody who did know would tell. The dead animals that turned up in the river? The dog Daisy was so scared of, glassy eyed and limp as it was dragged out with a slit throat? The canary at the house of the sweet shop owner? Even a human, eventually, an old woman who nobody recognized, until some teenager remembered her as a teacher from years ago.
Thankfully, after the old woman the bodies in the river stopped, and nobody connected them to Jackson. He, meanwhile, faded into obscurity. Sure, once in a while a mother would pull daughter aside, or uncle pull aside a nephew, and warn them not to go near Tanner's house. Not because he was a murderer, but because he was a drunkard, and when he wasn't pulling double shifts at the meat packing plant he was drinking in a hut downstream on the river, and wishing he'd never been dragged into the games. He wasn't forced to watch, no peacekeeper dared venture into the back alleys to drag a man out who'd know more about the games than anyone else.
Instead, he was left to rot, working the graveyard shift. People felt bad, they really did, but what could you do? He was a murderer, after all, even if not by himself 23 children had died so he could survive. Why would they let him out into wider society, it wasn't safe? Ten wasn't like One, or Five, or Seven, the mayor muttered to himself as the spread of Victors becam e more even among the districts. They wouldn't reward murder, regardless of how it happened.
Jackson never got his rewards for winning. He'd had it earmarked, as well. A gamemaker apprentice came out himself to tell him, six months after the fiasco of the tenth games. Stepped through the mud to a wooden hovel, to a drunkard who threw a bottle that shattered, reciting a premade speech.
"Jackson Tanner. My name is Coriolanus Snow, I'm a Gamemakers apprentice. I'm here on behalf of the Capitol to assure you that you will soon be taken care of. A new house, a weekly salary my bank account is very jealous of, and the privilege of travel to meet with your fellow victors, or to the Capitol."
His smile is thin, before he continues. Jackson doesn't like the Capitol at the best of times, and this upstart kid represents, to Jacky, everything wrong with it. Capitol ruined his life, after all, and he wasn't much younger than the boy looks to be now. When Jackson was that age, twelve hour shifts in processing plants were the norm.
"Oh. And you will be welcomed back every six months to mentor in the annual Hunger Games. I'm sure Ten will be glad of the opportunity you can bring."
The golden young man, boots splashing through a puddle, steps out, offering a smile to Jackson before he leaves.
A second thrown wine bottle, even as his neighbour comes around to demand what the issue is, why a Capitol brat would be all the way out here.
A shard of glass, glinting in the sunlight shining through a hole in the corrugated iron as Jackson runs his finger along one edge.
A neighbour, running to the train as the young gamemaker steps on. "Sir. I'm sorry for the interruption, but it's Jackson. He's killed himself.
Jackson was buried in a marked memorial block, one that stood past the ravages of the second dark days. Angus and Chrissie were, six months later, alongside him. They, at least, would have been glad of the help he could have offered, even if the peace of mind wouldn't have fended off the knives that had ended both of them.
121 more bodies lay in the red earth, until fire played across the grass, bombs and shells ploughed into the ground, and some were lost. Until Chrysalis (named for her aunty Chrissie), and Holstein joined him, in a neatly designed graveyard after Coin was eliminated. As the Mockingjay stood over the graves with her shovelful of earth, poured first into Jackson's grave, then Chrysalis, Holstein. Then a fourth, newly dug.
No words were offered. None could be given, nobody still alive in Ten remembered Jackson. What was remembered, as the graves were disinterred, was a quick movement of bones. The first nineteen dead, now to lie alongside their peers. And, to that end, next to the body of Jackson Tanner, lay Daisy Tanner. Together in death, even if they weren't the closest in life.
Author's Note
Heya all, long time Hunger Games aficionado here, ever since I got the first book at 12 years old (yes, a little young, but if you're old enough to participate in a death game you're old enough to buy a book)! I thumbed the pages avidly, and I've got a bittersweet memory of running through pages just before my Year 11 Chemistry exam (No comment on the results!) I didn't discover fanfiction for almost six years after, sure, and I've loved it ever since, but I've decided in lieu of simply reading the time was ripe for me to cast my hat into the ring! I'm going to try to update this every Friday Night if possible, even if that
I've got to be honest, I'm not expecting to ever fall even into the top 3 fanfic authors, and I view this very much as a pale attempt to emulate what's come before! There's an aim to stick as much to book canon as possible if only because I wouldn't look forward to overwriting what Suzanne wrote, and if I can make something all of you enjoy then I'd be more than satisfied!
So thank you, dear reader, for taking a gander at this very much WIP, and I hope that I can keep you all sated. Definitely would advise you to read other fanfiction, as well! Broaden horizons, and all.