Chapter Text
Fuck this.
Reaping day hung like a fog over my parents' heads. A really evil fog that liked to commit murder, I guess.
Mom and Dad had already lost one kid to the Hunger Games - to the Capitol, may trees fall on all those bastards' heads - and they lived in fear that I'd be Reaped as well. I probably should've, too, but I couldn't bring myself to feel much of anything except anger - not since Jasper was taken. Not since I watched my brave, invincible older brother die through a screen. I let my fingers brush the rough wooden hilt of the hand axe at my belt; the weapon's presence calmed me, gave me a brief sense of safety.
Maybe I'd throw it at the stage and watch Colwort Sickle's head cleave in two.
I was sitting on the oaken steps of our small porch, watching the sun move through the too-blue sky. It was raining when Jasper was Reaped; maybe in some perverse way, that was a good omen. Did I still believe in good omens? Maybe not, but I needed all the damn help I could get.
I looked up as the ancient, rotting door behind me creaked open. Mom and Dad wordlessly stepped out, and I stood, realizing the sun had passed its summit. I did my best not to look at my parents most of the time, but especially today; the grief on their faces mirrored what I felt, what I didn't want to display to the Capitol when they broadcasted their favorite pastime - murder - to the entirety of Panem. The Fairtide family, Aspen, Ciara, and their little boy Ronan, joined us as we walked silently toward the Justice Building; they had lost their daughter Rowan the same year we lost Jasper, in the 65th Games. Returning Ronan's nervous smile, I reached into a poorly sewn pocket of my ragged tunic, curling my hand around a tiny vial of pine needles.
The needles were from Jasper's token, the necklace of pine branches that he chose to take into his Games. The one he died wearing. Clenching my jaw, I let myself remember him for just a moment. I remembered how the pine necklace that the Victor of that year's Games, Finnick Odair, brought me after that awful Games crumbled slowly. Remembered going hungry for a week to buy the vial, wanting something special to put the needles I'd salvaged in, somewhere expensive and safe to keep the last piece of my brother I'd ever have.
I felt the backs of my eyes prickle and drew my hand back from my pocket, taking a deep breath of smoky, earth-scented air. I wouldn't cry. Not today, not any day.
And certainly not on camera.
Mom's hand brushed my back; I met her dark eyes for a second before we entered the courtyard before the Justice Building. Dad nodded gruffly at me before taking her hand and leading her toward the crowd of people too old to be Reaped.
Neither of them had spoken more than a word since Jasper died.
Digging my nails into my palms, I banished the tears that threatened to weaken me once more and joined the line of possible Tributes. I barely noticed it when they pricked my finger for blood, focusing only on the ground in front of my worn leather boots. A squat, matronly woman waved me past the front of the line; she didn't look like someone to assist in murder, and I wanted to scream at her, scream at the white-clad, masked Peackeepers lining the courtyard, scream at them all. I wanted to ask them why the fuck they would do this, ask if they could even see what they were doing. I wanted to hurt every single person who had to do with my brother's death.
But then they'd have shot me, and wherever I went after that, it wouldn't be good. So I reluctantly dropped my hand axe in the offered bin and found a place among the anxiously buzzing crowd. As soon as I stopped moving, thirteen-year-old Ronan Fairtide ran up to stand beside me.
"Johanna?" he said quietly.
I looked down to meet his wide caramel eyes. "Hey, kid. You okay?"
He shook his head silently; I sighed. "Yeah, I know. But it'll be over soon, your name's only in there twice. You're safe."
Not much of a reassurance, not for a compassionate kid like Ronan. I remembered he used to cry when I brought animals back from the market; I'd always have to skin them and cut them up in the yard we Masons shared with the Fairtides so he didn't have to watch, or he wouldn't eat them. I'd always admired how he had stayed that way even forced to watch the Games every year.
If the world was fair, he'd be free and happy and vegetarian, like the stuck-ups in the Capitol who reviled the Districts and smiled as we starved to death.
"Johanna, if it's me you have to take care of Momma and Papa, okay?" Ronan murmured suddenly.
I nodded and took his hand. "I will. But it won't be you. You'll be fine, I promise."
In my experience, promises have a tendency to grow claws and come back to shred one's heart to pieces, but I knew the odds of my young friend being Reaped were practically nonexistent, especially compared to mine.
My heart still got shredded to pieces, but I was at least right about that.
Suddenly a microphone boomed. "Testing, testing," trilled a voice, echoing through the courtyard. I squeezed Ronan's small hand reassuringly as Colwort Sickle, District Seven's resident herald of death, set up to address the crowd from the makeshift stage.
I'd have laughed if it were a different setting; Colwort wore a blinding hot-pink suit with a neon green tie and matching cuffs, as well as a sickeningly gleeful, wide grin. He looked even more stupid than most Capitol citizens, and that was saying something. He cleared his throat and tapped the microphone with a finger. "Testing, testing! Is this on?" his voice was reedy, breathy, and all too familiar. He'd been 'escorting' District Seven's Tributes for years, including Jasper.
Little did I know, he was about to continue the family tradition.