A/N: Idea got stuck in my head after reading SOTR and peer pressuring all my friends into reading SOTR wasn't enough. I'm going to do my best but I am NOT Suzanne Collins. I hope this scratches the itch for y'all too.
This is your one warning to read SOTR if you want this to make any sense. Topics in this story will cover the same as all of the books have.
Each chapter will do its best to align with a chapter in The Hunger Games! -Hawk
Another sunrise on a reaping day, another year of failing my promise to Lenore Dove.
It's only fitting that my punishment is the reminder that I grow another year older today, while Lenore Dove remains forever sixteen.
Effie Trinket is the one to rouse me. She's the only one who comes into my house in the Victor's Village each year when the Capitol descends on the districts like vultures, circling the reaped tributes like they're already dead and dying. A few years ago, one of the bright-eyed and sparkling new prep team members tried to wake me to stay on track with Effie's tight schedule. They'd been carried out in a stretcher after I threw a half-full bottle of white liquor at their head in self-defense. It was only a year after I'd swung out at another with the knife I kept under my pillow, but I'd missed that time. The fool had tittered and used the story as a way to move up the ranks to District 2. I'd heard later that Enobaria had threatened to give them a real knife attack story to cry about, vicious little bitch, but I'd smuggled in some of Meryl's finest white liquor for her all the same in thanks.
Effie huffs at the sight of me twisted and tangled in my sweat-stained bed sheets. I'm sure if she had the time she would sentence me to the horrors of a full prep-team makeover, but she had neither that nor the manpower for it.
"Up, up, up! It's a big day ahead!" She helps bundle me into a clean pair of pants and a shirt, which she's brought with her from whatever stylist has been unlucky enough to pull the short straw for this year.
I laugh but we both know it's really a badly-disguised sob. Effie and I both pretend that the tears tracking their way down my face are a side effect of my abrupt wake-up.
"It's nearly time, so eat something and make your way down to the Justice Building to join us," she says primly, but her nose turns up slightly. "I sorely hope you have something edible in here that hasn't rotted."
Her heels clack against the wooden floors down the stairs and out of the house. She's left me in my room, which is probably a bad idea considering how close the bed is. I'm far more unsteady on my feet now that I'm on my own, and I collapse back onto the sheets. Maybe this year will be the year I can avoid facing my failures.
Of course I can't. This time, I'm awoken unceremoniously by a pair of Peacekeepers who roughly haul me out of the bed. They half-escort, half-drag me out of Victor's Village and down to the town square, which has already been set up for today's spectacle. Even worse, children are already being scanned and herded into their age groupings. I'm woefully tardy and sure to get an earful about it later.
The Peacekeepers stash me behind the platform in the staging area hidden by the dramatic black curtain. It reminds me of the ornate theaters in the Capitol that I've had the occasion of seeing in the past two decades and change. I suppose there's no difference, seeing as this is a tragic performance all the same to the Capitol audience.
I duck my head. I want to remain secluded back here for the rest of the Reaping, not just because the dark fabric keeps the worst of the sunlight out of my eyes and lessens my pounding headache. The sea of faces that await me on the open stage develop into further uncharted waters with each year that passes and each pair of children I ferry to their televised deaths.
Mayor Undersee starts off with the same speech as always. I don't know why they bother with it each time—except I absolutely do, giving the semblance of tradition and routine to something so horrifying is what also gives it credibility—but when it comes to a close, I'm pushed up the first few steps. The world isn't spinning as much as it was earlier, so I'm able to get up the last few on my own and stumble over to my chair. Just like the speech, it's the same as always. After hearing a few of the older kids who think they're being covert when they sneak into the Victor's Village for their illicit hookups and parties refer to it as my throne, I've done the best I can to spend as little time as possible seated upon it.
It was too close a comparison to Snow's gilded throne at the opening ceremonies.
My sense of balance is still off enough that I can't stop my own movement, so I latch onto Effie as an impromptu brake. She slaps my hands away and barely aborts her own fingers from rising to her head to ensure her wig is still intact. It could just be me, but it seems slanted compared to the stage. Then again, most of the world remains tilted on its axis from my bleary perspective.
I turn my head forward as she makes her way over to the podium, balancing on her thin heels like a flamingo—or maybe my mind makes that comparison given her bright ensemble. It's not as ridiculous as some of the Capitolites I've seen considering how body modifications will trend for a season or two before everyone is back under the knife for the newest craze, like implanted rhinestones, cat whiskers, or skin tints.
To keep from focusing on any individual face, I let my eyes rove over the assembled crowd. The Capitol forces the children to divide up into age groups, but rising tensions in the past years between 12's social groups have led to the children also separating themselves by Seam and Merchant. Do the kids even notice the unconscious segregation they've imposed upon themselves? There's some mixing here and there, both within the crowd and the kids themselves, but not enough for me to ignore the similarities between their faces and those of the forty-nine coffins I've accompanied home.
"Ladies first!" Effie's cheerful voice pulls my attention as she stands between those damned glass spheres that hold the next two names I'll etch onto my soul. She reaches into the first and pulls out a slip of paper as the Fates cut another thread short.
"Primrose Everdeen!"
Fuck. I wasn't nearly drunk enough for today.