Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Part I- Snowfall on the Reaping

Chapter I

An artic seal pup was born on the morning of the reaping for the 74^th annual Hunger Games. Katara was awoken before the sunrise by the strained barks and wining's of Annah, a mother seal that had broken away from its pack a few weeks previously to nest on a rock by the waterfront behind Katara’s house. Katara had grown fond of the creature, fond enough to give her a name and the occasional scrap of food when she could spare it.

Katara dragged herself out of bed, pulling on an old fur-lined parka that had once belonged to her mother. She padded barefoot to her backdoor, picking up a scruffy towel and a few scraps of old, worn-down furs before she shoved her feet into her seal-skin boots and headed outside to where Annah was lying with her back to Katara, panting and trembling.

Thanking the spirits the sun had risen just enough for her to see properly without needing to light an expensive blubber lamp, Katara walked calmly over to the artic seal, whose vast white belly was beginning to shake as she pushed. Karata sat down next to her and laid the furs leather-side-down in the snow. She placed her hands very gently on Annah’s stomach, already feeling the faint heartbeat of a cub struggling to come out. Katara moved her hands down Annah’s stomach in slow waves, applying just the lightest amount to pressure, just as Gran Gran had taught her. This continued for a minute or so, Annah straining, Katara rubbing, until she caught sight of the small tail and back fins of the pup.

As delicately as she could, Katara reached for the legs, tugging in time with Annah’s contractions until a whole artic seal pub emerged, grey and slimy but, as far as Katara could tell, entirely healthy. Katara stepped back, allowing Annah to greet her pup in her own time. She watched with satisfaction as Annah nosed at the baby, letting out small barks of happiness.

Katara sat back in the snow, watching the new mother clean and feed her pup. It was unusual for an artic seal to be born this late in the year, when the outer layers of ice and snow were just beginning to melt, and the warmer currents brought fewer schools of fish, but then, it was also unusual for artic seals to give birth away from their packs. Perhaps Annah simply wanted to carve out her own path. It was ironic, Katara thought, that new life should be created on the very same day that so much life was promised to be destroyed. Getting your name called in the reaping in District 11 was as deadly as eating raw polar bear dog liver. As deadly as getting burned by the oil that the citizens of 11 extracted from the ground every day.

Katara sat in the snow, exhausted but too full of adrenaline at the prospect of the day ahead to go back to bed. For now, she was warm in her parka, and content to watch Annah curl around her pup and fall into a deep sleep.

The sun rose in the sky in a blaze of colour, the myriad hues of red, magenta and orange dying the snow around her a light pink. The world felt dream-like, not fully real. In this kind of light, even The Drifts, the place in district 11 where the poorest citizens lived, looked beautiful, the fresh snowfall making it look pure and unblemished, the dilapidation of the surrounding houses covered up by the gleaming snow. For a moment Katara could imagine that she was dreaming, that today wasn't Reaping Day, and that she would wake up in a warm bed in a far-away place where two children weren't about to be taken away from their homes to fight twenty-two other minors in a deadly arena.

 Katara’s trance was abruptly broken by a snowball striking her on the back of the head. She whipped round to face her attacker, cold snow dribbling down her back. It was Sokka, her older brother by a year, standing by the back door, grinning mischievously and holding second snowball ready in his gloved hand. Before he could do or say anything, Katara scooped up a handful of snow, melted it quickly into water, and sent it flying back towards Sokka. It hit him square in the mouth, freezing into ice as it made contact, silencing him. He glared angrily over at his sister, who gestured at him to shut up, and pointed at Annah and her cub.

Sokka rolled his eyes and walked over to Katara. He plonked himself down in the snow next to her, gesturing at her to remove the ice from his mouth, which had, admittedly, already stared to melt.

“Fine”, Hissed Katara, mildly annoyed but appreciative of her brother’s attempt to cheer her up. She removed the ice-gag, telling him to “Please be quiet!”

Sokka wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “I’m sorry, okay? But I had to come and get you. Reaping’s in three hours and Gran Gran says you need to start making yourself look pretty.”

Katara rolled her eyes, “And how long will you need to make yourself look pretty Sokka? Six hours? Six days? There’s quite a lot to fix...”

Reaping Day always cast a shadow over their tiny home, but at least Sokka who was seventeen, and Katara, who was sixteen, only had one and two years left before the risk of being entered into the annual Hunger Games would be a threat they could forget. Until then, they coped using humour.

“Ha ha.” Said Sokka flatly, standing up and brushing the snow off himself and pulling Katara up from the ground, “Now come on, Gran gran’s making Bannock for breakfast.”.

He smiled down at his sister, but the grin did not quite reach his eyes. Katara knew that we was, as always, every bit as afraid of getting reaped as she was.

Katara lowered herself into the cast iron tub, the freshly boiled water making her wince slightly as it washed over her body. A chunk of icy dread seemed to have wedged itself in the pit of her stomach, refusing to melt in the heat of the bath water. She tried to tell herself that it was okay, that the odds of Ming Ming, the flamboyant Capitol Representative for district 11, drawing out her name from amongst thousands of others were very, very slim. But never zero.

 She rubbed herself vigorously with the hard, yellow cake of soap that had cost Sokka two artic hens at the tiny cosmetics shop in the district centre. The pittance Katara’s father was paid to frack oil from the ground for twelve hours a day, risking burns and poisonous fumes could barely have paid for half this simple item. Ever since Katara’s mom had been executed by the peacekeepers for getting caught illegally fishing, Hakoda had banned his children from hunting, from even so much as touching a harpoon or spear. And that would have been fine, but when Gran Gran was forced to retire from the oil rigs when her arthritic limbs made even walking difficult, the family’s reduced income made starvation a very real threat.

Sokka had been just nine years old at the time, traditionally, he would not have been considered eligible to hunt, but no-one could afford to cling to the old ways anymore. Any pleas of hunger from the families of district 11 fell on the Capitol’s deaf ears. So, the moment Hakoda had collapsed on his bed after his shift, Sokka would sneak out of the house to join a group of seven or so other children and a few adults, all looking to support their families and fend off starvation by hunting.

And so their family had muddled on, Hakoda ignoring the extra meat that appeared on their table every few nights, Gran Gran salting and drying or selling any surplus, Katara using the money to provide other essentials such as flour, oil and furs for the family, donating what she could to the small hospital near their home where she occasionally volunteered, caring for those unable to afford the district doctor. The immensity of the family grief following Kya’s death eased as the years went on as they forced themselves to get on with their lives. You didn't have much choice in district 11, where death was seen as an inevitable risk of simply being alive.

Pulling herself from the bath, Katara trailed into the large room where Gran Gran was waiting for her, a comb and hairpin made from whalebone ready in her hand. She wore a solemn expression, the anxiety of having to watch her grandkids try to survive the reaping for another year etched on her weathered face. Katara was sixteen years old, and had been doing her hair herself every day for at least twelve of those years, except for Reaping Day. She sat down at Gran Gran’s feet, and bent the excess moisture out of her hair, already feeling Gran Gran’s gentle fingers begin to comb and run through her thick, dark locks. It was their little ritual, one that Katara had grown to love not only for the satisfaction of having her hair done, but for the comfort that she knew it brought her grandmother. Later, Katara knew that Sokka would allow the old woman to pull his equally dark, shoulder-length hair into its traditional warrior’s wolf-tail, the hairstyle Sokka had worn since he was a little kid.

Feeling her grandmother’s hands still, Katara made to stand, but was pushed firmly back down.

“Don’t forget this.” Gran Gran said, in the commanding tone that only old ladies have the right to use.

Katara watched as Gran Gran lifted a blue chocker with a carved stone pendant attached to it.

“Mom’s necklace!” Katara gasped, surprised at herself for forgetting to put in on, “Thank you Gran Gran.”

“You're welcome my dear, now, go and look at yourself in the mirror”

The mirror, one of the few decorative features of the room, had belonged to Gran Gran’s family, who had been part of the small merchant class of district 11. Gran Gran’s father had been a cobber who made boots and slippers for the other merchants of the district. Fine, pretty things, brightly stitched with blue and red thread. The business had died with Gran Gran’s father, when wadges on the rigs were higher than whatever money could be made in a shoe shop. If only it had stayed that way.

Katara surveyed herself in the mirror. She looked like her, but slightly cleaner, her hair smoother. Gran Gran had tied her hair in a single braid that fell down Katara’s back. Stands of hair at the front of her face had been looped back into the top of the braid, kept in place by small blue pins. She forced a smile on her face, tried to brighten her eyes, and turned away from her reflection.

“Now go and wake your father up, we need to head into town soon.”

Katara nodded in assent and turned to one of the doors leading off the main room. She knocked gently before pushing the door open. The room was still dark, but she could make out her father’s sleeping form spread across the bed. Reaping Day means a day off work for the rig workers, so most choose to lie in if they can.

Katara sat down gently on the edge of the bed.

“Dad?” She said, tentatively.

A faint groan came from somewhere under the sheets.

“Dad, it's time to get up.”

Another groan, then slowly, Hakoda forced himself into a sitting position.

“Thanks for getting me up, sweetie.” he murmured, then, without properly looking at her, “You look nice.”

“Thank you.” Katara said, unable to put any real emotion in her voice, “Be quick, Sokka and Gran and I are waiting.”

“Okay.”

The Justice Building looked as grey and imposing as ever by the time Katara and her family had made their way to the square surrounded by a cluster of dying merchant shops. Despite the brilliant sunrise that morning, the sky had clouded over and a light, wet snow had begun to fall.

Sokka pulled Katara into a sudden hug before quickly walking over to the roped off where they boys of 11 had gathered. They always reminded Katara of the pen’s the food sellers use to keep livestock in before they were slaughtered for meat. Katara tuned around, expecting to see Gran Gran and her dad nearby, but their faces had melted into the growing crown of adults.

Blinking in hurt shock, Katara walked over and joined the crown of girls on the opposite side of the town square. She was greeted by Niyok and Nutha, two fellow girls from the Drifts who were Katara’s particular friends. The three girls often took shifts together at the makeshift hospital that cared for injured rig workers who couldn't afford anything else. The hospital, as far as Katara knew, was completely illegal, but waiting for the district doctor to see to an injury could take days, even weeks, and many perished before they even had a change of being healed. So instead, hundreds turned to a mid-size, rundown building deep in The Drifts, where a limited number of water-healers and herbalists would try to cure their injuries. Niyok, like Katara, was a water bender, but the two of them lacked the training to know how to heal. Water bending in general was not a pastime the Capitol encouraged. Nutha worked alongside the two girls, helping to nurse their patients. Despite their efforts, the hospital’s success rate, Katara had to admit, was still fairly low.

Katara took Niyok and Nutha’s hands, squeeing them tightly as Ming Ming Monkot took to the stage Infront of the Justice Building. She was swathed in a long, emerald green robe lined with what appeared to be brilliant white polar bear dog fur. Her black hair was streaked with gold and done in a series of elaborate looping buns. She wore a blue headpiece, in acknowledgement of the colours of the district, perhaps. Her skin was ghost-white, making her blend in unnaturally with her snowy surroundings.

She stepped up towards the microphone, taking tiny, measured steps. A broad smile stretched across her face, as if someone was pulling up the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were all but dead.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome to the 74^th annual Hunger Games! Reaping Day is truly Panem at its finest!”

Katara looked over at Sokka who, as could be expected, was rolling his eyes at Ming Ming's Capitol-approved words. Ming Ming then continued with the usual spiel about the history of Panem, how once, long ago, the world consisted of four nations; The Northen and Southern Water Tribes, the Air Nation, the Earth Kingdom, and the Fire Nation. The four nations lived together in harmony, but everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked, thus beginning the 100 Years War. Out of the conflict arose the Capitol, a huge shining city that belonged to no one nation. The Capitol brought about peace by conquering the four nations, turning them into 12 districts.

Katara knew that district 11 was once called the Southern Water Tribe, and had almost been completely destroyed by the War, its people left impoverished, unable to get by as they once had done, by fishing and hunting for food. According to Ming Ming, the generous Capitol had bravely taken over the Southern Water Tribe, re-naming it District 11. The Capitol discovered oil wells deep beneath the seabed surrounding the district and built oil rigs for the citizens of 11 to work on, paying them just enough to survive. The Capitol had lifted the savages of the South up and out of their old, brutal ways and customs and into the modern world. The years of peacekeeper brutalities, starvation, sickness and deadly winters that the Capitol failed to assist in were never mentioned.

Then came the part of Ming Ming’s speech where she recalled the creation of the Hunger Games. As punishment for their crimes during the war, and their refusal to bow down to the Capitol's power, every year, the districts are forced to give up two ‘tributes’, one male, one female, to compete in the annual Hunger Games, where the 24 tributes must fight to the death for the Capitol's entertainment. Every year, the last tribute standing is crowed Victor of the Hunger Games and given all the riches of Panem as a reward for giving the Capitol citizens something interesting to watch.

“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks.” Said Ming Ming, stretching her surgically warped features into an expression that is meant to be grave and stately.

Ming Ming then recited the list of past victors from district 11. In 74 years of hunger games there have been exactly three, none of whom are still alive. This poses a problem as each year the tributes are meant to be given a mentor to help them through the games. The mentor must be a past victor.

“So,” Said Ming Ming, back to her usual persona of psychotically enthusiastic about the Hunger Games, “The Capitol have allowed a victor from District 10 to come and be this year’s District 11 mentor! Please welcome the Victor of the 23^rd Hunger Games, Master Pakku!”

A short, slender old man with a long white beard stepped onto the stage. He is old but looks sharp, his movements precise and controlled. Scenes from Pakku’s Hunger Games are projected onto screens on either side of the stage.

As she watched Pakku slice an opponent's head clean off with a vicious swipe of ice, Katara noted dazedly that Pakku is a water bender, and a particularly ferocious one at that.

“And now! The moment you have all been waiting for! It is time to announce the tributes! Happy Hunger games! And maybe the odds be ever in your favour!” Ming Ming’s signature line is met with blank stares from the watching crowd. Katara watches as she reaches for the glass bowl containing slips of paper with the names of every boy in district 11 aged 12-18. It differs in every district, but boys are always reaped first in 11, something to do with the ancient rite of superiority men had over women. Evidently, some customs never die out.

Ming Ming’s fingers curl around a sheet of paper and she drew it out.

Thousands of names, Katara thought desperately to herself, there are thousands of names in that bowl, it won’t be Sokka, it won't be Sokka.

“The district 11 male tribute will be…” Ming Ming paused to squint at the paper, “Sokka, son of Hakoda!”

Katara could hardly take in what she was hearing. She had watched friends and siblings of friends get called out for as long as she had been alive, but somehow it had never occurred to her that it would ever, ever happen to her. To her left, Niyok let out a small, soft “No!”, while Nutha hugged Katara hard, as if trying to literally hold her together. Katara felt as though she has been thrown into dark, ice-cold water. She cannot breathe; she cannot speak. Time seemed to speed up, and the next thing Katara knows Sokka is standing up on the stage besides Pakku and Ming Ming is reaching for the bowl of girls’ names.

“And now for the ladies...” Ming Ming said, but Katara barely hears her. Greif has already set in. Katara knows her brother, strong as he is, will not survive a Hunger Games, not against the terrifying fire-bending tributes from districts one, two and three. The odds are never in her family's favour.

This is proven true when Ming Ming announces that the female tribute from district 11 will be Katara.

Chapter Text

Chapter II

The world seemed to be moving very slowly. Countless faces turned around to look at the female tribute from District 11, eyes wide with slow-motion sympathy. Katara watched her breath creep out of her mouth, turning to smoke in the chill air. Her shoulders felt heavy, pinning her to the ground.

No, is all she can think. No.

She stood still, unable to move, for endless seconds, breath held, dazzled by the incomprehensible realisation that her death, her actual death, was fast approaching. She could barely think for the horror of it all.

But just as he had that morning, it was Sokka who broke Katara’s trance. She caught a glimpse of her brother, standing tall and proud on the stage, refusing to show the district and the watching audience his fear. His eyes found hers, urging her to be strong, too. Don’t give in Katara, she can almost hear him say it. And suddenly life seemed to return to Katara’s limbs. She took one step forward, and then another, then another. She kept going until she reached the platform, where she walked to stand side-by-side with Sokka.

“Oh my!” Exclaimed Ming Ming, clapping her hands together, “ Siblings! How thrilling!”

No one in the audience seemed to share in the woman’s delight. How on earth Ming Ming could view the idea of brother and sister being forced to kill one another as anything short of horrifying was beyond Katara, but she had no time to ponder on this. The waiting Mayor began to read out the Treaty of Treason, the long, boring piece of legislation that defined the rules of the games. But Katara isn't listening. All she can think about is the sheer unlikeliness of it all. How, how out of thousands and thousands of names, did it work out that hers and Sokka’s got chosen? Was it just a very unfortunate coincidence? Or was it decidedly less random than that?

Everyone knew, or at least, suspected that the reaping’s could be rigged. Capitol Citizens would be more likely to watch the games if there was a little extra drama, and if that meant brother and sister fighting in the same games, then so be it. How else could you explain the numerous times the children of victors  or the descendants of known rebel families get sent into the arena?

So maybe it was for pure entertainment purposes, but a awful idea had just occurred to Katara. Did her and Sokka’s selection perhaps have something to do with the ever-nagging feeling that the Capitol somehow knew about, or were at least suspicious of, Katara and Sokka’s very much not legal pastimes. Katara’s healing and Sokka’s hunting. Starvation and illness were by no means an uncommon causes of death in district 11, and they may well have claimed the lives of the remaining members of their family if the brother and sister hadn’t fought every day to prevent it. If the Capitol had indeed picked up on what they had been doing, then sending the siblings into the Hunger Games would have been a nice way to punish them.

Katara’s musings were interrupted by the sudden blaring of the Anthem of Panem blasting from speakers either side of the stage. Then a pair of enormous peacekeepers shoved her and Sokka forward into the murky interior of the Justice Building. Something deep in Katara's chest told her to run, to hide, to do anything, anything at all to get her out of this situation. But the peacekeepers, after years of escorting desperate, petrified children to their deaths would be able to stop Katara in seconds.

As they left the stage, Katara watched as Ming Ming surreptitiously took out a small glass bottle, unscrewed the lid and threw back it’s contents. Katara’s new Capitol escort grimaced, then walked off into the Justice Building.

They were marched into a small but, to Katara at least, jaw-droppingly grand living room. The wooden floor was polished to the nines and covered in woven mats in bright colours. There were ink drawing and paintings with real gold inlay on the walls, as well as a guilt-edged mirror that far surpassed the small, tainted thing back in Katara’s home. The bizarre amalgamation of furnishings from each of the four nations was meant to look grand and imposing but instead gave the room the air of an overcrowded junk shop decorated by a mad person with very poor taste in interior decoration. This effect however, did nothing to make the place less intimidating.

The peacekeepers left, leaving Katara and Sokka alone.

Sokka sat down on a nearby sofa, and Katara sat next to him. They sat in silence until the door burst open and Gran Gran and Hakoda entered the room, followed by Niyok, Nutha and several younger boys Katara recognised from Sokka’s hunts.

Their dad already had tears streaming down his face. He hugged each of his children fiercely but was unable to say anything. He stumbled as if blind to a nearby chair, and slumped into it. The crowd of younger children gathered around Sokka, pushing and shoving each other to get a chance to speak to him.

Niyok and Nutha turned to Katara whose mind suddenly flew to the hospital, to dad, to Gran Gran, to everyone and everything that might suffer when she's gone.

“Look, while I’m gone, can you please make sure that-” Katara began, but Niyok cut her off,

“Don’t worry about anything. We’ll look after the patients. I can take more shifts to cover you.”

“A-and don’t worry about your family. I’ll come and check on them every day, I swear it!” Piped up Nutha, doing her best to look brave, though there were tears sparkling in her eyes.

Unable to speak, Katara pulled them both into another hug, clinging on to her friends for dear life.

“I hope those kids can manage to hunt okay without your brother.” Whispered Niyok, giving the crowd of children a worried look.

“They’ll be okay.” Said Katara, wanting badly to believe it.

She watched as Sokka gave a small, ruddy-cheeked boy a mock military-style salute before the kids left the room, waving goodbye.

“Kill them Sokka!” One yelled, pumping his fist in the air.

“Yeah! Show no fear!” Shouted another, running off to join his friends.

Sokka’s smile melted off his face the moment the kids left the room. Then a peace keeper marched in to tell them they have five minutes left to say goodbye.

“We’ll go.” Said Niyok gently, hugging Katara one more time, before giving her hand a final squeeze, “Goodbye Katara.”

“Bye.” Said Katara blankly, watching her two closest friends leave the room, believing in her heart that this will be the last time she will ever see them.

Katara sat back on the sofa, followed by a misty-eyed Sokka.

“Right.” Said Gran Gran, surveying them both, hands on her hips, “I don’t know how you too managed to wind up in this mess, but at least you both have a fair chance of at least surviving a few days, if not winning.”

Katara almost laughed out loud. The thought of her or Sokka surviving a single night in the arena was completely ridiculous. Tributes from 11 were easy targets; underfed, undertrained and often completely unskilled. Katara pictures herself and Sokka facing huge earthbending, boys twice her height wielding meteorite hammers, vicious girls who know twenty ways to kill you with a knife, firebenders who take immense pleasure in burning everything in sight. Years of watching the Hunger Games broadcasts had taught Katara to expect all this and more. At least the years of decent food from Sokka’s hunts had but a little more meat on their bones than was average, but it would be nothing compared to the Careers.

“Sokka,” Barked Gran Gran, “You are strong, you can hunt. Protect your sister and get food for the two of you. There’s always some kind of game, something you can kill and eat. And as for you Katara, you can water bend. Get some training while you are in the capitol, learn to fight. That Pakku man seems like he knows a thing or two, get him to help you. Protect your brother. Only heal if you need to, only kill if you need to”

Katara could barely see the point in trying to learn to fight when she would likely be dead in minutes, killed by children who practically came out the womb carrying deadly weapons. And as for healing, she didn’t even know the basic hand movements.

Gran Gran’s face softened a little and very suddenly she seemed to grow older, sadder, “You can't both win, so please, protect each other until you can’t anymore.”

Katara and Sokka nodded. Silence took over once again. There was still one person left who Katara wanted, needed to hear speak.

“Dad?” Sokka asked, a little tentatively.

Hakoda, who had been sat very still, staring at some fixed point in front of him, suddenly straitened up, face pale, as if Sokka had thrown another snowball at him.

Katara looked at her dad, silently begging him to find the strength to say something, anything.

“G-goodbye kids,” he whispered, his voice cracking, “ I-”

He drew in a long, shaky breath, “I want you to know that- that I am so proud of you both and your mother would be to. I love you both so much.”

That is all he could get out before collapsing back in the chair, wracked by sobs. Katara and Sokka swarm him, enveloping him in a deep hug.

Katara tries hard not to resent her father for not being able to drudge up even a tiny piece of useful advice, anything of substance. She knows he should be comforting them, not the other way around. She hates him for being weak. But she hates herself more for feeling like that.

When they let go, Gran Gran addressed them again.

“It’s been a long time since district 11 had had any hope of having a victor, but you two have brought my hope back.”

She turned to Katara, pulling her into a hug, “Good luck my little water bender.”, then she turned to Sokka, “And you my brave warrior,” She paused a moment as if to think, “Be nice to your sister.”

And with that, peacekeepers swept into the room and marched Katara and Sokka off to the docks, where a huge silver boat was moored, ready and waiting to take them to the Capitol. They were taken into a large, cold reception room on the main deck, all polished silver and mahogany. The bright lights and sheer luxury of the place made Katara’s head spin. The two sit down on plush velvet armchairs as the boat begins to pull out, sailing away from district 11.

Katara stared desperately out the large windows because she knew that this would likely be the last time she will ever see home again. But the falling snow is too thick, and all she could see was white.

Chapter Text

Chapter III

Despite the sleek beauty of the boat, Katara can’t help but feel like a trapped animal, an artic seal caught in a net. Her heart pounds, and she continues to take in the carriage. It is heated artificially, so feels unpleasantly warm to a girl who has spent her life shivering over blubber lamps and weak, rusting radiators. She begins to sweat under her thick parka, so she tugged it off.

Sokka was pulling fur out of his gloves in an agitated, fidgety manner. Katara was just about to ask if he was okay, as if that wasn't a completely pointless question, when two attendants burst in, banishing sliver trays of food and drink.

The heat and the swaying motion of the boat combined with a gathering sense of dread were making Katara feel sick so she declined, but apparently even getting called in the reaping couldn’t put a damper on Sokka’s appetite. He wolfed down the selection of meatloaf sandwiches provided, crumbs spewing from his mouth as he ate.

The attendants watched, looking faintly disgusted. Let them, thinks Katara, angrily. The plump bellies and full cheeks of the attendants make it plain that they’d never known the hunger of her and Sokka’s childhood, that had made every decent meal since feel like a miracle.

Katara is lead down what feels like miles of corridors before she reaches her cabin for the night. It is simply decorated and had a cold, unused air to it. Katara looked at the plush bed, wondering how many now dead district 11 kids have slept in it before her. She is instructed by the attendant to dress herself in the clothes neatly folded in a chest of draws and to be ready for supper in an ten minutes. Then she is left to her own devices.

She remained standing in the room, that animal panic returning, gluing her to the floor. Her hands reaching automatically for her mother’s necklace, still tied around her neck. She traces the patten with her fingers. The powder blue stone has been smoothed over from years of her fingers feeling the spirals and waves that once represented the Water Tribes.  The Capitol loathed to admit that the world was once split into 4 Nations, each with their own unique culture and government, rather than 12 uniform districts controlled by the Capitol, so the necklace was a rarity.

She stands still for a moment, letting the necklace ground her, connect her to her mother, her home, her family. If only she could take in into the arena with her, somehow it would all be okay. She would die, yes, but her mother would stay with her until the end. She allows a few hot tears to trickle down her face before wiping her eyes, reminding her self that crying would do very little to help.

When she had steadied herself, Katara dressed for dinner in plain blue leggings and a blue and white wraparound dress and left the cabin.

She made her way back down the corridor until she reached a door marked ‘Dining Hall’. The automatic door slid open, revealing Sokka, Pakku and Ming Ming sat around a vast marble table. The stony silence was almost deafening. Ming Ming’s eyes had glazed over, and she was staring out at the steadily darkening sky and sea outside through a porthole, not noticing Katara. Katara suspected that her escort’s sudden ability to completely zone out had something to do with whatever vile drug had been in that glass bottle Ming Ming had been drinking from outside the Justice Building.

Sokka appeared to be completely enthralled by the white plate in front of him, and Pakku was lounging back in his chair, swilling the golden contents of a glass tumbler casually around.

He regarded Katara with a lazy, patronising eye the said, “Ah Miss Katara, how kind of you to join us. I was just telling your brother about some of the mutations that you could be facing this year.” He grinned a horrible, gleeful grin, “The carnivorous squirrels seemed to be of particular interest to him.”

Katara looked over at her brother who looked faintly green. She remembered that years games well. The 68^th Hunger Games had been the year the Capitol had sent an entire zoo’s worth of horrific mutations into the arena to pray on tributes. Sokka had had nightmare’s for weeks after a twelve year old boy had had his face ripped off by a viscous pack of squirrels that had been programmed to want nothing more to eat than human flesh. If the boy had survived, he would have been Sokka’s age by now.

“Sit, sit!” Insisted Pakku, “Dinner will be here any minute.”

Katara sat down uneasily in the chair next to Sokka.

“Why don’t you tell me a little bit more about yourselves?” Said Pakku. “ I can’t say I was happy with being encumbered with your savage district, so you better sell yourselves to me very well. Convince me why I should even bother considering getting you sponsors.”

Hatred burned though Katara. What was this man’s problem? Surely, having been in the games himself, he would want to help them?

“Well Katara’s a waterbender.” Said Sokka, immediately, “She’s a pretty incredible healer.”

Katara almost laughs out loud at the lie. She was about as incredible at healing as she was at flapping her arms up and down and flying.

“Oh yes?” Said Pakku with another snake-like grin, “And how on earth did a district girl like you pick up such skills?”

Katara froze, glancing nervously up at the Capitol attendants dotted around the room. What was Pakku trying to do? Get her into trouble with the Capitol? But then she caught Sokka’s expression. He raised his eyebrows at her as if to say, Go on, tell him!. If they wanted sponsors and a helpful mentor, she would simply have to lie. As for the actual water healing, they’d figure it out later.

“I-” She began, struggling to come up with a reasonable explanation, “M-my mother taught me, a little, I always wanted to be a healer if, you know, I didn't have to work on the rigs…”

Pakku raised an eyebrow, clearly not convinced, “I see...”

Katara's cheecks flushed with shame. Suddenly remembering Gran Gran’s advice Katara said, “But I want to learn how to fight, if you’ll teach me.”

The old man’s expression soured suddenly, the bored amusement gone from his face, with a sneer he said, “I don’t think that will be happening. I’ve never seen the point of waterbending women learning to fight. In my district, women heal.”

This made utterly no sense to Katara, and she was about to tell Pakku such, when she felt Sokka stamp down hard on her foot. He shot her a glance that said, it's not worth it. Katara fought to push her anger down. Sokka was right, truing her mentor against her this early on in the games was far from a good idea. In the middle of the games, a favourable mentor could mean the difference between life and death. Starving, injured or desperate tributes could be sent gifts of food, water, supplies or weapons from Capitol sponsors, all arranged by their mentor.

The most famous instance of this happened a few decades before Katara was born. A handsome teenage boy from district 2 called Piandao was sent a beautiful antique sword from his sponsors, the most expensive gift ever given to a Hunger Games tribute. The gift allayed him to quickly dispatch the six tributes remaining in his arena, winning the Games in record time. Katara knew from the various re-runs of Piandao's games and interviews with him on television that he now spent his time making highly-coveted swords for Capitol citizens to swing at each other with in state-of-the-art practice rooms. But every so often, a Piandao sword wound up in the arena. Sokka always got very excited when one did.

“So we have the best healer in Pandem” Said Pakku, his sarcastic smile making Katara feel sick to her stomach. “But what about you, young man.”

Sokka shrugged, “Well I can’t bend-”

“But he can fight!” Cut in Katara, not wanting her brother to sell himself short, “He’s strong, he always wins sports competitions at school.”

At least that wasn’t a lie, she thought.

“Good, good.” Murmured Pakku, staring at a pleased-looking Sokka, “And I can tell that you’re a clever enough young man. Attractive too, both of you. Thank the spirits neither of you are covered in pox scars or those ridiculous facial tattoos your people seem so fond of. Yes, the Capitol will like you for looks, at least”

He flashes a snake-like smile at Katara.

Katara feels her cheeks flush at this comment.

Pakku’s evaluation/ praising of Sokka is cut short by the arrival of dinner, which completely distracted Katara from her growing dislike of her mentor. Katara had never in her life seen so much food at once. She can’t name half the dishes served, since much of the food comes from the warmer parts of the world, traditional District 11 cuisine was clearly not good enough for Capitol’s tastebuds.

First comes a thin, brownish soup with a vaguely fishy flavour filled with chunks of tofu and seaweed. This is followed by a salad of bright vegetables with a sour dressing, then braised turtle-duck with purple rice, then tuna stake, cooked raw in the middle. By the time dessert comes, Katara’s stomach feels as if it's been stretched out, like leather set to cure. However, the sight of the glorious dessert allows her to keep eating. Creamy, sticky white rice with a huge chunk of yellow mango in a sweet sauce. Its probably the best thing Katara has ever eaten.

She is just beginning to feel at-ease in this strange new world when the TV in the dining carriage comes to life. A re-run of the day’s Reaping’s plays, Pakku advises them to pay attention and assess the competition.  

The first pair of tributes comes as a shock to Katara because the male district 1 tribute is followed by a girl who is very clearly his sister. Both have volunteered, as many do in the wealthy District 1, where winning the Games is considered a high honour. A pretty girl with a wicked glint in her golden eyes is followed by her brother, a tall, dark 17-year-old with a huge scar across his left eye. The girl grins, waving at the crowd, while her brother looks on in stony determination.

Sokka glances at Katara in confusion, and Katara feels the same. Why would you willingly choose to enter into the Hunger games with your own sibling? Katara knows that the kids in 1 have different moral standards to the rest of the world (difficulty not to when you view murder as an honour), but surely this was too far? Katara couldn’t even begin to imagine killing Sokka.

Katara looks over to see if Ming Ming is going to exclaim in delight at another pair of siblings entering into the games, but their escort has now passed out at the table, her food left untouched, lost in the daze of whatever drug she had taken.

The rest of the reaping’s pass in a blur, but a few tributes stick out. A huge boy from 2, tall as a man, complete with a small beard, glares menacingly at the camera, flexing his bulging biceps. A small, blind girl from 4 who looked no older than 13 and walked with a cane. A tall, well-built boy from district 9 who put a protective arm around his female counterpart, a sobbing teenage girl with a small frame, malnourished limbs and bright white hair.

Katara looks at Sokka out of the corner of her eye, he is staring fixatedly at the white-haired girl, biting on his nail.

Then it’s 11’s turn and Katara watches herself and Sokka step up onto the stage, watches Ming Ming’s excitement, the crowd’s numbness. She looks for her Dad and Gran Gran as the camera pans the miserable faces of the audience, but she can’t see them.

Finaly District 12 is called. The smallest and poorest district, 12 is populated by people who used to be called Air Nomads. Back in the Dark Days, the Fire Nation tried to wipe the Air Nomads from existence, but had been stopped by the Capitol who rounded up the remaining Air Nomads and gave them District 12 to live in. The price the Air Benders paid for their salvation from extinction was the loss of their freedom, and the ex-Nomads were confined to their northerly district. No one quite knew what service 12 provided the Capitol with but is was rumoured that it had something to do with the mysterious Spirit Vines that provided energy for the Capitol. The people of 12 worked in factories, refining the Spirit energy for Capitol use. Air Benders in the Hunger Games always hugely entertaining to the Capitol, as their strong connection to the Spirits made many of them talented, and, when it came down to it, deadly benders. There was  no room for old Air Nomad pacifist values in the Hunger Games. Starving, desperate children tend to forget their moral principles.

The district 12 tributes this year were a boy perhaps a year or two younger than Katara with a kind, round face and a shaven head, and an older girl with long brown hair. They had the same gentle grey eyes and kind, if mournful, expressions. They both had a look about them that Katara recognised all to easily as hunger. These kids had likely never been fed properly a day in their lives; despite any bending prowess they may possess, and their stark cheekbones and skinny arms were proof.

Katara watches as the girl tribute opens her mouth, drawing in breath. For a bizarre, fleeting moment, Katara thinks that the girl is about to sing. But then the screen goes blank and the Capitol emblem fills the screen.

Then the anthem plays, the programme ends, Pakku dismisses them, and they make their way out of the dining carriage to bed.

Standing in the gently rocking corridor, Katara thinks back to the array of tributes she has just seen. It’s easy to tell just from that short glance that she and Sokka, in terms of weight, skill and strength, are at a huge disadvantage. She thinks nervously of the huge boy from 2, or the equally massive boy from 10 with a truly menacing face. They could crush her like a shell. Katara looks at her older brother, wanting the reassurance that he has always been able to give her.

“So...” She says in a would-be-casual voice, “What do you think of our odds?”

Sokka scoffs, making to open the door to his bedroom, “Not in our favour.”

Chapter Text

Chapter IV

Katara walks into her cabin. Someone has dimmed the bright lights, making them low and comforting, and the room is beautifully warm.

Katara slips into a set of soft pyjamas and climbs into bed, desperate to get all the sleep she can. She stretches out in the bed, revelling in being able extend all four limbs properly. Her lumpy single bed at home has been too short for her since she was 14. She pulls the soft, thick blanket over her body, her nose wrinkling at the faint chemical smell wafting from it. Her stomach flips over unpleasantly when she remembers how many now-dead children have likely slept in this very room, on this bed. On second thought, she’d take her bed at home over this one any day.

Every one in 11 knows, or rather, knew, someone who had been sent into the Games. Whether it was a sibling or a cousin or a distant cousin or a neighbour or a friend, the ripples of grief caused by the yearly reaping spread far and wide.

What had they been thinking of as they lay here, all these long dead kids? Wonders Katara. Had they been thinking of home, of stewed sea-prunes and ivory carvings and stories told huddles around the oil-burner on a mid-winters night? Or were they thinking of the Games, their plan for survival, their skills? Maybe they had simply been too numb, to busy wallowing in self-pity to think of anything else, a point she was coming close too.

Did they long to see their families again? Were they crying over their fate and the unfairness of it all? Maybe they had been secretly happy to escape 11. Maybe they were exited to spend a week swimming in the warm waters of the Capitol. Maybe a tiny part of them had been happy to no longer be a burden on their fathers. Maybe the guilt of thinking that was eating them alive.

She rolls onto her stomach, wanting to scream, but stops herself. No point wasting precious energy. She needs to see Sokka again, to talk strategy, just to talk really. So she pushes open the cabin door.

She makes her way down the corridor, when an attendant materialises out of the gloom. He wears long black robes emblazoned with the silver symbol of Panem, making him out as a Dai Li, an agent of the capitol, a personal protector of President Kuei himself. Katara had seen them dotted around district 11 since she was little, but has never had cause to get so close.

“Can I help you?” He asks pleasantly, his wide-set eyes blinking slowly, docile as a koala-lamb.

“No thank you.” Replies Katara, an inexplicable shudder running down her spine, “ I'm just off to see my brother.”

The attendant’s smile widens, “I am afraid that will not be possible, it is time to turn in for the night”

“But I want to see him.” Said Katara, frustrated but trying to stay calm.

“Any socialising you need to do with the other tribute can take place in the morning. Now please, return to your cabin.”

“No! I going to see Sokka!”

She made to step past him, but with almost unnatural speed, the attendant grabs Katara’s hands, forcing them behind her back and ushing her to the ground. He pushes her into the wall, shoving her neck and left shoulder into a burning-hot radiator. He holds her there while she struggles. Katara can feel her skin blister and burn. Just when the pain is about to become unbearable, the attendant slackens his grip and Katara falls to the floor.

Looking up, she sees a scowling Pakku towering over her, and for a moment she thinks she is saved.

“What d you think you are doing?” He demands, turning on the agent.

“I’m sorry Sir, I was just enforcing what you-”

“I don’t care!” Pakku replies, his voice a deadly whisper, “Get out of here before I have you thrown off the boat.”

The Dai-li agent walks off, his robes barely moving as he disappears down the corridor.

“Get up.” Pakku demands.

Katara got to her feet, wincing at the pain in her neck.

Pakku surveyed her, upper lip curled, “No word of thanks?” He asked.

“Thank you!” Says Katara rapidly, “Thank you. Do you have anything I can put on it?”

A horrible smile twists the old man’s face, “ Surely a healer of your prowess can fix a simple burn wound like that? Goodnight, young lady.”

And with that, he is gone.

Numb with pain and the shock, Katara returns to her cabin.

Tears sting her eyes as she stumbles into the small bathroom and confronts her own reflection inj the mirror. The red, jagged burn stretches from the hollow of her neck to the underside of her chin. Angry white blisters throb. It’s a loud, hot kid of pain that forces her to her knees. She clutches at her neck, body racked with sobs caused by the pain and the cruelty of the agent and the fact that her mentor hates her and the misery of her whole situation. She cries and cries for losses yet to come, of her Dad and Gran Gran and most likely Sokka too. She cries until the pain makes even thinking about family too much to bear.

Minutes pass. Suddenly she steels herself, the medic inside her springing into action as she forces herself to think what to do.

Water, her brain stutters, water is good for burns. Desperately, she bends water from the tap and holds it on the burn, trying desperately to cool it down. The pain intensifies, then lessens suddenly. She holds the water there for a minute, feeling the water draw the heat out of her skin. She breathes out a sigh of relief, then stands up, facing the mirror again.

She almost drops the water in surprise when she sees that the water around her neck is glowing a soft, iridescent blue. Not only is the water glowing, but all the blisters and burn marks radiate the same faint light. Katara is entranced by the beauty of it, but suddenly gasps in shock. The pain was completely gone. It no longer felt as though someone was bending pure fire directly onto her neck.

Tentatively, she removes the water from her body. Her skin is as smooth and unblemished as it was half an hour ago. She runs a hand over it in disbelief, tears drying on her face as she realises what she has just done.

She has seen it a handful of times in the hospital back home in district 11, seen it occasionally in re-runs of old Hunger Games, tried it so often with Niyok on small cuts and scrapes, but always unsuccessfully.

For the first time in her life, Katara had healed using water bending.

And for the first time since her name got called in the reaping, Katara dares to have hope.

That night Katara has a dream she’s had before. She opens her eyes and is standing in the main room of the hospital back home. Freezing blasts of air whoosh through the cracks in the poorly-insulated wood and the whole building groans and creaks in  the gale. She walks up and down the rows of beds, administering doses of medicine to various patents as per instruction. She tries to look the wounded and sick people in the eye, but their faces are blurred and she is tired.

The sound of moaning draws her to the far corner of the room, where a boy abut Sokka’s age lies in the greying sheets, one side of his face swathed in bandages. He moans again, unable to speak, gesturing at the bandages.

“You… want me to take them off?” She asks, her voice barely a whisper.

The boy nods.

Hands trembling, Katara obeys, bracing herself for what comes next. The empty eye socket, the skin stripped off almost to the bone, the melted flesh. A chemical burn from scolding oil. A common enough fate for the oil rig workers of 11. As a healer, Katara knows she should be used to this by now, yet this dream haunts her almost every month.

She knows it’s about to come, it’s always the same in this dream. She will take the bandages off, the boy will scream, lurch forward, cough dark, viscous blood into her face then die right there in the bed. At least the dream will be over soon.

Ready for the inevitable, she removes the bandages. Only this time, she notices the bucket of water beside the bed. In her dreaming state, she remembers what happened earlier that evening. She remembers she can heal. So she bends the water from the bucket, wraps it around her hands as she did earlier and holds it over the boy’s face, watching it glow. The burn seems to melt off the boy’s features, revealing the full face of the victim.

That’s when she realises who it is.

A scar covers the top half of the boy’s handsome face. His half-open eyes are pure amber and his hair is jet-black.

It is the male tribute from District 1. She stares at his face for a moment, their eyes meet. And in that split second, he looks at Katara with a kind of fire in his eyes, an expression that Katara can’t quite read etched on his face.

Then the boy springs forwards, a blast of fire escaping from his closed fist, knocking Katara backwards. The fire spreads across the hospital, engulfing Katara in flames that get brighter and brighter and hotter and hotter until she wakes up with a start, sweating and shaking.

In the grey light of her cabin, Katara can see out the porthole that the boat has docked in the enormous harbour of the Capitol, and she realises that the Hunger Games are soon to begin.

Chapter Text

Zuko Part I

One year earlier…

Zuko’s reaping day was going to go exactly to plan.

In a few hours, he would arrive at the reaping ceremony and proudly take his place in the crowd, dressed in the finest robes father could afford. The capitol escort would ask if there were any volunteers, and Zuko’s hand would go strait up. He had won the right to be the volunteer. He had gotten the best grades at the Games Academy, he had proven to his teachers that he was the best chance District 1 had of getting a victor that year. He had firebent and wrestled and survival-trained and practiced with his swords until he felt numb with exhaustion. Father’s reputation was enough to frighted any competition for the title of tribute away. Zuko’s place at the table was laid.

It would all be fine, just as Uncle had said it would. Zuko would go into the 73^rd Hunger Games and win and bring glory to his family and next year he would mentor Azula through her games and she would win and bring even more glory to the family. It would all be fine.

So why in the name of agni had he been called to see the head of the Academy?

“I’m sure it will be nothing serious, nephew.” Uncle had said as Zuko paced the kitchen , “Perhaps Headmistress Hei-Ran simply wants to give you some last-minute advice before you embark on your journey into the games!”

Zuko wanted badly to believe that was all it was, but Headmistress Hei-Ran rarely gave up her precious time to have hear-to-hearts with students. Zuko didn’t like the woman. Father always said that ever since her daughter Rangi managed to loose her Hunger Games twenty or so years ago, Hai-ran had totally lost her grip. Zuko couldn’t help but agree with father. He had watched Rangi’s games in training before and felt that anyone stupid and weak enough to fall in love with a rival tribute (and one from a mud-slinging non-career district too!) had it coming. The Hunger Games were no place for love, any idiot could tell you that.

Zuko is sitting on a bench outside Hei-ran’s office. He scowled. He hated feeling like a misbehaving child about to be told off. This was supposed to be his day, a day be had been waiting and hoping for all his life, and Hai-ran was ruining it.

The opening of the Headmistresses’ door made Zuko jump.

Out walked father, his tall and imposing figure was still impressive, alive with muscle underneath his robes. Even now, as a sixteen year old, Zuko's fear of his father ran through his veins, pumped along with the steady beat of his heart, slowly growing every day.  

“Go in.” Said father.

The barely concealed fire in his voice told Zuko all he needed to know. This was not going to be a friendly visit.

It takes approximately two minutes for Headmistress Hei-ran to completely ruin Zuko’s life.

It had happened only a few weeks ago, about mid-May. Zuko had reached his final year in the academy, which meant that the training he had undergone was about to get real. Zuko, along with several of his fellow classmates, were tasked with taking the life of an avox in a simulated Hunger Games. This was their final test before they were considered good enough to be true Hunger games candidates. Up until then, they had practiced all the arts of war and murder on dummies and targets, never on live people. Avoxes fresh from the capitol didn’t come cheap, so this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the students.

Zuko remembers that day well. He remembers seeing the avox’s lined up, ready and waiting to meet their fate. Unable to run, to protest, to do anything but wait for the death-blow to come. The avoxes were likely treacherous criminals from the Capitol, or district rebels. In other words, scum. The point of the exercise was not necessarily to fight the avoxes, but simply get used to killing. No point panicking about it in the arena, might as well get used to it now.

The whistle blew. The students readied their weapons and set off o  the hunt.

Zuko stalked through the pretend forest, dao swords sheathed behind his back, ready for his target.

He spotted her. A youngish woman with dark skin and long brown hair, a number 2 emblazoned on the rough tunic she had on.

Zuko unsheathed his swords, he was ready for this. Or so he thought.

For a tiny, tiny moment, he made the mistake of looking in the woman’s eyes. They were the deep blue of an ocean, and infinitely kind. Zuko’s heat almost stopped beating. The woman had a mother’s face, almost his mother’s face. He knew he couldn’t do it.

The something went horribly wrong. A violent tremor shook the earth, and a huge crack began to open in the ground. The simulation flickered, then returned to normal, before glitching violently and dissolving before Zuko’s eyes. The earth continued to shake, throwing Zuko and his avox to the ground.

Chaos erupted.

Some of the students chased after their avoxes, still thirsty for blood. The teachers yelled desperately to try and re-establish order.

Zuko’s avox stood rooted to the spot in terror.

“Go!” Yelled Zuko, “Run away! Go!”

But the avox didn’t move.

The wall to the training ground had been shaken open, revealing the jungle that surrounded district 1.

“Look! You can hide in there!” Zuko said, coming nearer to his avox. “No one will notice!”

Why wasn’t she moving?, he thought, why wasn’t she moving?!

“Please!” He begged, desperate now.

The avox came to her senses, without glancing back at Zuko, she sprinted for the opening in the wall and disappeared into the thick, dark jungle.

Zuko stood still, breathing hard. The tremors seemed to have stopped.

What had he just done? What had he been thinking, letting a low-life avox go free? She was probably off to kill President Kuei!

He glanced around nervously, but the still screaming students and yelling teachers made him feel pretty certain that no-one had noticed. Or so he’d thought. A security camera had caught in 4k what Zuko had done. He should have killed her, he knew that. He should of and he did’nt .He failed. And now, sitting in Hai-ran’s office, he was paying the full price of his failure.

He was not going to be in this year’s Hunger Games.

It was going to be Praun instead, the second-best boy in his year.

Zuko’s one golden opportunity, and he blew it.

Watching Praun go up on stage later that day almost causes Zuko physical pain. He doesn’t know which is worse, father’s black stare of pure disappointment or Azula’s smug grin, as if she always knew Zuko would screw up like this.

Zuko feels dirty, beyond ashamed. He is a rebel sympathiser, the lowest of the low. If anyone were to find out, even his father’s reputation could not hide the shame. Zuko stares at his feet for the rest of the ceremony, his entire body burning.

Zuko knows what’s coming. He knew it the moment he caught a glimpse of that fire in his father’s eyes outside Hei Ran’s office. The moment the font door of their house closes, it begins.

“How could my own son act in such a way?” Father demanded, “What have I done to deserve a rebel-sympathiser for a son! This is not how I raised you Zuko. You have disgraced and disrespected me.”

The disgust in his father’s voice is like acid, eating away at Zuko’s body.

“Please father,” Zuko said, trembling with fear, “I didn’t mean to disrespect you, or- or anyone! I didn’t know what I was doing-“

“Silence!” Roared Father, “You will learn respect! And suffering will be your teacher.”

Zuko doesn’t like to remember the rest.

The awful burst of flame that shot out of father’s fist, striking him in the face. Catching a fleeting glimpse of Azula, who has smiled as he fell to the floor. Crying out at the pain that was so intense the bright white fire subsided into black. The pain that was so intense he called out for his mother, who didn’t call back.

Waking up in the guest bedroom of Uncle’s house hours later, the sight in his left eye all but gone and a sharp ringing in his left ear that did not go away for weeks.

That year’s Hunger Games came and went. Praun died in the bloodbath, the cretin. Stabbed in the chest by some random from district 5 while Praun had tried to attack her. Two weeks later, that same nobody from 5 was crowned victor. She only killed two other people, and spent most of the games hiding! How completely pointless. Zuko burned with anger as he watched the girl go up to receive his crown from President Kuei, and go on his victory tour, and attend his Victory party at President Kuei’s home, the Mansion of Golden Light. The girl didn’t even look happy at her good fortune! Half the time she looked downright miserable.

But Zuko had been given hope.

Headmistress Hei Ran, in a fit of generosity, had convinced father to give Zuko a chance to compete in next year’s games, provided he come top of his class once again. Yes, it meant that he would likely end up in the same games as Azula -no one had any doubts that Ozai’s little fire-bending protégé was destined to be district 1’s next female tribute- but at that point, Zuko was so determined to get his victory that he was okay with it.

So, one year later Zuko is entered in to the 73rd annual Hunger Games to represent district 1 alongside his sister, Azula.

Zuko’s second reaping day was going completely to plan.

He had raised his hand at the reaping ceremony, proudly volunteering to be that year’s male tribute from district 1. He had gotten the best grades at the academy again, won more fights than he could count, and was now a good enough fire bender to defeat even Azula, or so he hoped. And when it came time to do the stimulated man hunt, he killed his new avox without even thinking about it.

After the reaping ceremony, he had gone into the Justice Building with Azula, who was greeted by dozens of her adoring ‘fans’, as well as Headmistress Hei Ran, uncle and father.

No one had spoken much to Zuko, he had very few people to say goodbye to. Word had somehow gotten out about what Zuko had done. It hadn’t made him a target, no one who had seem Zuko swing a sword would dare pick on him, but it had isolated him from everyone it seemed. Apart from uncle.

Uncle pulls him into a tight hug, which made Zuko squirm with embarrassment. But no-one is paying any attention to him, all eyes are on Azula. She smiles her perfect, practiced smile and father puts his arm around her expressing a kind of fatherly pride that Zuko had never, not once, had directed at him.

For the sake of entertainment, the Capitol have allowed father to be Zuko and Azula’s mentor for the games. Uncle catches the train to the Capitol with them, as he is needed for the Victor’s parade. Zuko is happy about this. He would not be able to stand a two day journey alone with Azula.

Now Zuko is standing in the dining carriage of the train, staring out at the miles and miles of jungle and hills rushing past.

“Oh Zuzu!” says Azula’s patronising voice, “Stop brooding like an old hermit and come and eat!”

Zuko turns to face his sister, scowling.

“Azula there is no need to tease him.” Chides Iroh,” but your sister is right Zuko, sit down! This braised turtle duck is enough to make a man weep!”

Reluctantly, Zuko sits. He doesn’t want to be wasting time lounging around with his increasingly fat Uncle and increasingly smug sister. He wants to train more, to plan his strategy for the games.

The turtle duck is good though.

Zuko looks across the table to where his father is seated. They haven’t spoken much since father burned Zuko’s face. Zuko watches as father takes a sip of wine, then smiles at something Azula says. Zuko isn’t listening.

After dinner Uncle takes Zuko aside, offering him a cup of tea.

“What is wrong nephew, you barely spoke at dinner today. Are you not exited?”

“Uncle, one year ago today I lost it all. I want it back. I want to win, I want my honour, my crown, I want my father not to think I’m worthless.”

Uncle sighs, “I’m sure he doesn’t.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. What did Uncle know about Zuko’s situation. Uncle had won his games with ease, he had never needed to prove himself to anyone. Not the way Zuko did.

They sat in silence a while, slowly sipping their tea.

“You know Zuko, you could back out, not compete this year. There are dozens of boys back home who would give anything to be in your shoes. You could live a normal life, away from the Hunger Games.”

“How could you suggest that?” Yelled Zuko, hating the old man for even suggesting that he make such a cowardly decision, “Don’t you understand? I need this more than I have ever needed anything. I can’t live a life in which I am not a victor. Don’t you want me to experience my father’s love?”

“Of course I do nephew. But I worry about you. What if you don’t make it? Have you considered that?”

Zuko hadn’t. But he supposed the next few weeks of his life will hold few surprises. Either he will win the games, and father will be finally be proud of him, or he will die, so it won’t matter anymore.

He just wishes he didn't have to wait so long to find out which it would be.

“I am sorry to upset you, Zuko, it’s just that ever since I lost my son, Lu Ten…”

There are tears in Uncle’s eyes now. Zuko feels like the worst person alive. Zuko’s cousin Lu Ten had died in his Hunger Games a few years ago. He had been like Zuko now, the top student in his year at the Academy, a deadly fighter and skilled survivalist. Everyone had expected Lu Ten to win, including Iroh, but as it turned out, the odds had never been in his favour. Lu Ten had been killed by Capitol-made muttations halfway through his games, his death just about broke Iroh.

“You don’t need to say it Uncle…” He says, ashamed.

But Uncle does say it.

“… I think of you as my own.”

Chapter Text

Part II- Welcome to the Capitol

Chapter V

Despite everything, so far, Katara had been rather enjoying her visit to the remake centre. She had spent her morning lying in baths of sweet-smelling liquids, steamed herself in a wooden sauna, and had cooling mud smeared over her skin. She has lain on soft couches while piping hot jets of water have been squired through her hair while strong, gentle hands massage her scalp.

She is warm from the cups of ‘beauty tea’ that have been plied upon her all day, the rich blend is like nothing she has ever tasted before. Every single room of the re-make centre features at least one golden platter piled high with fruit, a rarity in 11, where citizens are expected to get by on the neon-orange ‘vitamin drinks’ the Capitol provides, as well as salty, home-picked ocean kumquats and seaweed. Katara has been stuffing herself with baby-soft apricots, sour passion fruit, juicy pomelos and tangy mandarins all day.

Every toe and finger nail on her body has been trimmed down to a smooth, rounded tip and lacquered with a clear substance that gives them a glossy shine. While she didn’t enjoy having her body hair ripped from her skin using strips of wax and paper, she likes having soft, silky legs. The skin on her face, roughened by wind and cold, has been made soft with seaweed lotion, and her eyebrows have been plucked into two regimented shapes. According to the three nameless women who have been administering these procedures, this is known in the Capitol as ‘beauty base 1’, and involves looking ‘effortless’ but ‘polished’.

She hasn’t seen Sokka since breakfast, where the two of them and Pakku had sat around the table listening to Pakku and Ming Ming discuss their positive and negative physical traits in merciless detail.

“Now I don’t think that Sokka is quite handsome enough to get sponsors based off looks alone.” Murmurs Ming Ming, gazing at Sokka through half closed eyes.

“Come now madam, he’s not so bad.” Replies Pakku, “Bring his hair up to date a bit and I think we’ve got ourselves quite a looker.”

“Hey!” yelled Sokka, hands flying defensively to his wolf tail, “What’s wrong with my hair?”

Ignoring him, Ming Ming continued, “But this young lady is really something. If only her feet were just a little smaller, and she wasn’t quite so dark, she could pass for real lady of the Capitol!”

So that’s what was happening to her. Katara was being pinched and prodded and blow-dried and bathed into a real lady of the Capitol. One who would get sponsors. One who had to get sponsors. She had no other choice.

Ming Ming’s remarks had made Katara feel uneasy. Small feet and pale skin had long been fashionable in the Capitol. According to Gran Gran, it had once been common practice for Capitol women to break the bones in their feet to make them appear smaller, stuffing their tiny feet into silken shoes. The procedure made it difficult for the women to walk, but it didn’t matter. These were Capitol women. If they needed to get something, it could be brought to them at the push of a button. Luckily for Katara, and every other female tribute, the practice had died out, Capitol women finding that having fully functional feet was rather more enjoyable at parties.

Now Katara is lying in a steaming stone bath, hair piled on top of her head, waiting to meet her stylist. She knows she should be nervous but in all honesty she has enjoyed her day so much she feels she could die quite happy in the Games. She thinks back to the tributes from 11 last year, both of whom had been dressed by their stylist in beautiful, costumes of glossy back fabric that clung to their figures and turned rainbow when the light hit it. Oil slicks. She wasn’t sure who the district 11 stylist was exactly, but she felt confident she was in safe hands. The three women who have been attending her stand behind the bath, heads bowed, hands clasped.

Idly, Katara bends streams of the piping hot water through the air, watching them glisten in the soft light. She wonders what it must be like to be a girl her age in the Capitol, to spend all day lounging around like this, having voiceless women do your hair and makeup for some party of other. Never being cold, never being hungry. Eating crab cakes and salmon roe and buckets of mango sticky rice instead of whatever mystery meat was served at school, or a mangled caribou leopard Sokka had dragged home. A life as warm and lovely as the bath Katara was lying in.

And even though she knows that even if she had dodged the reaping and lived a long life in 11, this fantasy would never, ever have become a reality. Not for girls like her.

Rockets and catherine wheels explode in the starless sky. Glitter and petals rain down from above as a humungous silver chariot pulled by ostrich-horses in gleaming metal armour waits to pull Katara and Sokka through the streets of the Capitol in the tribute procession. The majesty of the street they are about to process through threatens to bowl Katara over. Buildings of white marble stretch tens of stories up, looming over her like over-bearing teachers.

The blaring sound of an orchestra playing a victory march fills Katara’s ears. She looks around her, staring at the screaming crowds of Capitol citizens. Their faces blur into a mass of bright clothing and elaborate wigs. The scent of jasmine fills the chilly night air, combining with he smoke of the fireworks creating a heady perfume that is beautiful, but ominous.

The bliss Katara had felt that morning in the re-make centre has all but worn off, and now she feels that familiar, cold dread settle in the bottom of her stomach once again.

The roar of the crowd is like a tidal wave, threatening to bowl Katara over as the obedient ostrich-horses beginning their slow trot out into the street. Katara sways on her feet, unable to focus.

Sokka notices and grabs his sister’s hand.

“Show no fear”, he whispers, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze, “Remember what Vibhi said. We are not going to let them intimidate us.”

Katara nodded. Earlier that day, she and Sokka had met their stylist, a small, quiet woman called Vibhi with bright blue streaks in her dark hair. Vibhi was by far the nicest, most normal Capitol person Katara had met yet. Vibhi had actually been more nervous to meet Katara then Katara had been to meet her, and Vibhi’s hands had trembled as she spoke. But she came to life when she brought out Katara’s costume.

Made of turquoise plastic, it is more a sculpture than a dress. A ridged veil hangs over her head, shading her face. The plastic has been molded to her body, fitting her perfectly, as if someone has frozen a waterfall just as it poured down her figure. The hem of the dress splays out at her ankles, revealing silver slippers with small heels. Layers of plastic fan out behind Katara, as if the dress is being blown by an invisible wind.

Katara smiled as she remembered how timidly proud Vibhi had been of her work.

“I wanted it to send a message.” Vibhi had said in her almost-whisper of a voice, “District 11 has an… unkind reputation in the Capitol. I’m afraid some people think that you are… umm, well… uneducated, unattractive. Not that I think that’s true!” She said rapidly, flushing, “But that’s why I’ve made you this dress. Every woman in the crowd tonight will be envious. I don’t want anyone to see you and your brother as lesser.”

Vibhi has gone rather pink as she said this. She reminded Katara of Nutha, shy but fiercely intelligent, and it made her trust the stylist deeply.

Some people scream at Sokka, blow him kisses, point him out to their friends. Sokka looks slightly stunned, but is clearly enjoying the attention. As he relaxes, he begins to play into it, smirking at the crowd, flexing his muscles.

Sokka’s peacocking draws the crowd’s eye, but not nearly so much Katara’s dress.

Katara can feel thousands of eyes move over her body, taking in every fold and ripple of the costume. She feels as though all the stars in the sky are watching and judging her every move, smelling her anxiety from miles away. Katara feels her breathing begin to quicken and tears prick her dazzled eyes.

No. She thinks suddenly, fiercely, No! Show no fear.

She grits her teeth, forcing her mouth into a proud smile. She grips Sokka’s fingers harder, raising their entwined hands above her head. Spotlights find them, light shines through the dress, making Katara glow. The crown explode into applause once again, some throwing flowers, others reaching out towards them desperately. Vibhi’s dress is indeed making one thing clear, district 11 will not be made fun of. Katara and Sokka are a force to be reckoned with.

The chariot procession passes quickly and Katara and Sokka are soon brought out into a wide square lined with even more beautiful buildings.

Ten other chariots are waiting in a neat semi-circle in the square, and Katara turns around to see district 12 pulling in.

The costumes of the other tributes rival her own. It was an unofficial Hunger games tradition for stylists to dress their tributes in ways that either symbolised the export of a tributes district, or reflected the element a tribute could bend, hence Katara’s water dress.

“It’s always been my favourite bending disciple.” Vibhi had shyly confessed to Katara, “I wanted to show everyone how beautiful it is. And I was sick of 11 being known as ‘the oil district’ and nothing else. Your culture is beautiful. Everyone should recognise that.”

Katara surveys the other tributes. In the early years of the games, the costumes worn by the tributes had been a small part of the games. The costumes of old had been ill-fitting, unflattering, dull affairs that really did nothing more than humiliate the tributes. But now, after 73 years of games, styling the tributes had become an honour for fashion designers across the Capitol. As the years went on, the costumes had gotten more and more elaborate and beautiful, considered the perfect way for a designer to show their skills. The opinion in the Capitol was that if someone could make a low-life teenager from the districts look good, then they could do anything. Katara had always thought the costumes were beautiful, whereas Sokka had described them as stupid and reductive, he didn’t know why anyone would want to look like a puddle of oil.

District 1, an ex-Fire nation district, don robes the colour of, predictably, flames. Tendrils of orange fabric train behind them, and crowns of shining gold frame their faces. In the bright lights of the square they are as beautiful as they are terrifying.

The other career districts are just as imposing. A stony faced girl with immaculately cut bangs and the towering boy Katara had noticed during the replays of the reaping’s are decked out in gleaming silver stitched with blood-red jewels that represented their districts export, weaponry. A very pointed visual reminder of how deadly district 2’s tributes will likely be.

The rest of the districts are just as predictable. District 3 wear shimmering kaftan’s that shine silver then gold. Silver and red wires have been painted on their arms to represent the lavish technology their district produce. 4 are dressed up as statutes to represent masonry. 5 have lent into the earth bending theme and are decked out in robes of white streaked with grey that resemble marble, with elaborate coils of stone bracelets twisting up their arms. The list goes on  and on and the costumes are so beautiful and so bright and the spectacle of it all is so great that Katara feels dizzy again.

Somewhere in the blur of whiling lights and colours, a pair of amber eyes find hers. It is the boy from district 1. The boy from her dreams. Or rather, nightmares. His eyes remain on Katara, just for a moment, but then something makes him look away.

The anthem blares again.

A black and gold palanquin enters the square, carried by twelve burly men and flanked by Dai Li agents walking two-by-two, faces down, long qi’s running identically down their black-robed backs. The Dai Li are followed by wave after wave of peacekeepers, guns at the ready. Trailing behind them are the numerous victors from previous games. After 72 years of Hunger games, about fifty remain.

Katara doesn’t recognise them all, but a few stick out to her.

There’s Roku, victor of the 17^th Games. A tall old man with flowing hair tied at the top of his head with a flame headpiece. He had been a classic district 3 career tribute, strong, clever, a skilled fire bender who had won his games by simply killing as many opponents as he could. He had been a crowd favourite, full of stories about his hopes of winning the games to bring honour to his family and to convince the girl he loved to marry him. The capitol had been airing re-runs of his wedding ever since it happened.  

The next face Katara recognises is far more sinister. A woman standing at least a head taller than the rest of the crowd around her marched through the procession. Kyoshi, victor of the Second Quarter Quell, the year the Capitol had sent double the number of tributes into the arena. Kyoshi had entered the games a tall, stick-thin young girl with a fire in her eyes that had burned until she drove a spike of earth through the heart of her district partner, Yun, making her the winner of the 50^th Hunger Games. Katara couldn’t help but search for the scars that were said to cover Kyoshi’s arms from when a tribute from District 2 had shot pure lighting at her, leaving her half dead. Kyoshi had been nursed back to health by a female district 1 tribute. Katara couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but she could remember the loving fear in her eyes as she kept Kyoshi alive day by day.

Yangchen of district 12 is another recognisable face. Her arena had been an unusual one. A complex series of underground tunnels, filled with mutations and deadly traps at every dead end. Many tributes froze or starved in the dim tunnels, a few went mad from lack of sunlight. Yangchen had made herself seem weak, clueless even, disappearing into the gloom early on in the games. But the minute another tribute got close to her, she proved that air bending could be nothing short of deadly in enclosed spaces. It had been one of the shortest Hunger Games in history.

Another two men stand out in the crowd. One is tall and dark, with a long black beard and imposing features. He wears a sleeveless top, gold bands wrapped around his engorged biceps. He looks out at the tributes, a cold, disdainful look etched on his regal face. Katara knows him as Oazai, victor of the 39^th Games. He is flanked by his brother, Iroh, a fatter, kindlier looking version of Ozai and victor of the 34^th Games. But Iroh’s kindly face hid a viscous fighter who had become famous in his games for screaming bursts of pure fire at his opponents, earning him the nickname ‘Dragon of the West’ in the Capitol. Both of the brothers from district 1 had won their respective games when they were just fourteen years old.

Katara glances at the district 1 tribute to see if he was still looking at her. But he only has eyes for the victors.

The victors take their places on either side of the palanquin, the anthem blasts again and out from the green curtains steps President Kuei. His surgically-smoothed features seem jarring, almost uncanny in real life. His smile too bright, his face too uniform. He steps forward facing the crowd, arms out stretched, welcoming the victors, Capitol smile beaming out. Katara thinks he is going to give a speech, try justify this madness, anything. But no. He retreats back into the palanquin, his attendants whisk him away, the spectacle dies.

“Oh.” Says Katara, turning to Sokka in disappointment.

“I guess they don’t want us district kids looking at him for too long.” Sokka murmurs, “We might contaminate him from a distance.”

“Don’t be so cynical Sokka!” Whispered back Katara, “They haven’t treated us that badly…”

Katara tries to squash down the memory of the Dai Li agent burning her neck. She hadn’t mentioned that particular incident to Sokka yet, and had no plans to do so anytime soon. He would only kick up a fuss, and right now, they needed all the Capitol support they could get.

Sokka looks at her in surprise, “Seriously? I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Capitol is still going to try very hard to kill you next week, why are you standing up for them?”

“Don’t act like you weren’t loving it just now, preening and smiling at those women in the crowd. Admit it, your enjoying being here too!”

Sokka had just drawn in a breath to respond when the anthem begins to play for a final time and the ostrich horses trot off.

Katara and Sokka force their faces into proud smiles once again as they are taken back to the lavish apartment they will be staying in for the next week. They eat supper with Ming Ming in almost total silence. Ming Ming appears to be on another planet entirely, spooning food in the general direction of her mouth but more often than not missing it entirely and slopping it down the front of her blue velvet dress. Katara and Sokka do not argue any more, neither wanting Ming Ming or any of the capitol attend ants to see them at odds.

Once she has finished her third helping of caramel pudding, an attendant tells them very politely that Pakku has suggested (demanded) that they go to bed early, and be up at six AM sharp for breakfast before training.

Katara trudges off to her room, which is typically beautiful. Her eyes, once so deprived of anything pretty, have grown accustomed to the staggering beauty of everything and everyone in the Capitol.

She lies in the impossibly comfortable four-poster bed, feeling certain that she was right and Sokka was wrong. Besides that weird mishap with the Dai Li, and Pakku being an utter dick, their time in the Capitol had been fantastic. Vibhi and the adoring crowd and the nice ladies who did her hair had all made it a lot more… fun that she had anticipated. And she knew she want alone. She could see it in the sparkle in the other tribute’s eyes, in the way their skin seemed plumper than it did on reaping day, their cheeks fuller, their hair glossier.

Yes, they will die, all but one of them. But surely it is worth it to escape their cold, miserable district lives, if only for a week.

This is the last thought Katara has before she drifts off, the soft blankets of her Capitol bed lulling her to sleep.

Chapter Text

Chapter VI

Katara is woken by a gentle tinkling of bells ringing in her room. Soft, warm lights turn on the moment she opens her eyes.

She hauls herself out of bed, stomach clenching in anticipation for the day to come. She walks over to the little bathroom leading off from her room. She douses herself in gloriously hot water in the large marble shower before pulling on the simple training outfit provided. Black trousers and a black and red fitted shirt with a collar.

She leaves the bathroom to find Vibhi standing in her bedroom, surrounded by the three silent women from the re-make centre.

Katara’s face breaks into a smile when she sees her stylist.

“Hello Katara.” Says Vibhi, “How was your first night?”

“Good, thank you,” Katara replies, slightly unsure as to why Vibhi is here.

“I’m glad to here it. Now I was talking with your mentor and he and I agree that it would be nice for you and your brother to show a little district pride at training today.”

Katara highly doubted that snobby Master Pakku had anything to do with the decision, with his strong dislike of 11’s ‘savagery’. But she thought it seemed like a good idea.

It turned out that showing a little district pride meant Katara having her hair styled.

At first, Vibhi and her assistants had tried replicating various styles they thought were traditional to district 11, but none of them had looked good. In the end, Katara had done her own hair, re creating exactly the look Gran Gran had given her two days ago.

A warm smile spread across Vibhi’s face when she saw Katara.

“There! You look perfect.”

Katara smiled back, so glad to have Vibhi for a stylist.

“Now I was thinking. You might also want this.”

Vibhi held up Katara’s mom’s necklace, which Katara took from her, clasping it around her neck.

Thanking Vibhi, Katara turned to leave.

“Katara?” Vibhi said, just as Katara was walking out the door, “ I know Pakku can be difficult, but remember, he was in your shoes once. I think he does want to help you, really. Give him a chance.”

Katara nodded doubtfully. She supposed Vibhi was right, but it would be easier to sympathise with Pakku if he didn’t seem to actively dislike Katara so much. But she needed to learn to fight. She needed to persuade Pakku to teach her. He was the only truly good waterbender she knew. It was her only hope. Healing could only get you so far in the Hunger Games.

She sat down at the breakfast table. Sokka had already arrived, hair also done in district 11 fashion. Pakku is there, Ming Ming was nowhere to be found.

Pakku gets straghit down to business.

“First thing’s first, when you are in that training centre, you talk to no one. There is no point making allies, you always end up either getting killed by your allies or having to kill them. Neither is good, but both are avoidable of you remember that no one can be trusted. The moment that countdown ends it is every man for himself. Stick with each other in the games if you want, but just know that when it comes down to it, one of you will probably end up killing the other.”

Katara blanches at Pakku’s harsh words and bizarre advice. Surely allies were their best chance of staying alive in the arena?

“Instead, I want you to knuckle down and learn as much as you can. If you don’t know how to already, learn to build a decent fire, learn to hunt, to set traps. Camouflage is useful, so is climbing. Remember that you will be fighting people who know, really know, what it means to kill. Never, never should you underestimate a career tribute, To do so is death.”

Pakku paused, considering them.

“You two are not from my district, I have no duty to either of you whatsoever. The next few days are an opportunity for you to show me why I should help you. Follow my advice exactly and you might just get lucky. Embarrass me in any way, and you will not receive so much as a grape in the arena. Understood?”

Katara and Sokka nod.

“Good. Now go and enjoy your day.”

“Spirits above, what is his problem?” Asks Katara, furious at the old man. Clearly even Vibhi’s most beautiful dress couldn’t change Pakku’s stuck-up opinions on district 11.

“I wish I knew…” Replied Sokka.

The two were walking through the miles of corridor that lead to the training centre. Pakku had gone ahead with some of the other mentors, leaving the siblings alone.

The training centre is a huge, cold room decked out with row upon row of training dummies and racks of weapons that Katara could only name about half off. There is a huge climbing wall in the centre of the room as well as several stations for learning ever survival skill under the sun, from identifying edible insects to carving a blow-gun out of bamboo.

Katara and Sokka make their way to the centre of the room where the other tributes have gathered. The career tributes stand in a group a little distance away from everyone else, already trying to mark themselves out as different.

The head trainer begins to talk about what will be expected of them today, that they are free to go to any of the stations and can request private sessions with individual sifu’s. There are masters for every skill imaginable, including all four bending disciplines. Katara looks round to where the waterbending masters are, hoping to learn from them.

When the head trainer’s speech is over, the crowd of tributes spread themselves across the room. The careers immediately head for the shooting range and racks of weapons.

“I’m going to the water bending station.” Declares Katara.

“Really?” Said Sokka, brows knitting together, incredulous, “Didn’t Pakku say not to?”

Katara scoffs, “I’m not listening to that sexist old twat, I want to learn waterbending!”

Sokka rolls his eyes, “Fine. You go splash around. Meanwhile, I’m going to go learn something useful.”

He’s only teasing, but Katara feels a flicker of rage run through her.

She heads over to the waterbenders. No other tributes are with them, so Katara guesses that either she will be the only waterbender in the arena. She’s not sure if that will be an advantage, or simply make her a bigger target.

Just as Katara is about to speak to the waterbending trainer, she feels a pair of eyes boring into her back. She turns around to see that it is Pakku’s ice-blue eyes that have been staring at her from a balcony overlooking the training room. He makes his message clear with one sour frown. Katara will not be learning waterbending, not while Pakku could help it.

Not wanting to show her anger at the stubborn old man, Katara fights to force her face into a pleasant smile, and walks off to join Sokka at the fishing station. She makes her movements deliberately casual, as if this had been her plan all along.

“That was quick,” Said Sokka, “Mastered waterbending in thirty seconds did you?”

“Har har,” Replied Katara, “I just got the feeling that it wouldn’t be a good idea…”

She glanced pointedly back at the balcony, where Pakku was still standing, glaring down at them.

Taking the hint, Sokka handed her a bundle of twine and wires, and they set to work coping the instructor to make fishing hooks.

The rest of the morning is spent moving from station to station, leaning a variety of survival skills. Sokka excels, completely in his element. Katara does well too, especially at the first aid station, where she applies and expert torniquet and sets a broken leg to effusive praise from the trainer, but her heart just isn’t in it. All she can think about is waterbending.

After a lunch of more meat-paste sandwiches, Katara and Sokka decide to spend some time surveying their fellow tributes.

At the back of the training room, there is a huge climbing wall with a small ledge at the top. Katara and Sokka scramble up as best they can, and sit on the ledge, pretending to practice knot-making, but really concentrating on the other tributes, and looking for potential allies.

Their eyes are drawn to the career pack, all of whom seem to be focusing more on the killing-and-maiming side of training.

Katara can’t help but wince as she watches the boy from 2 aim a flying kick at a dummy, burning it’s plastic head off its shoulders.

A sudden blast of fire draws Katara’s attention to the other side of the room, where she sees the scar-faced boy from 1 begin a firebending duel with another trainer.

“Agni Kai…” She hears Sokka murmur under his breath, an expression of fascination on his face.

Katara doesn’t need to ask what an Agni Kai is, it becomes pretty clear what an the moment the boy from 1 steps forward. He raises his arms, face set in an expression of determination. The trainer lunges forward, sending a blast of fire strait at the boy’s head. He dodges, ducking low and sending a bright orange jet streaking across the trainer’s back, but to no avail. The trainer doges the boy’s blow. The boy strikes again and again, first at the trainer’s face, then his legs, but none of his blows land. Katara can already see what will happened next. The boy tries to strike again, but the trainer is ready. Just as the boy brings his arm up, the trainer grasps it, forcing the boy to the ground.

The boy gets up, his face a picture of angry disappointment. From her high-up perch, Katara can see the other male tributes from districts 2 and 3 smirking amusedly at the firebender’s failed duel.

Sokka turns to Katara, grinning, “Maybe you don’t need to worry about learning to flight, it doesn’t seem like our competition’s all that hot…”

“Maybe your right!” Said Katara, grinning hopefully.

Sadly, Sokka did not turn out to be right.

“Wow… those girls are really… good.” Says Sokka in a surprised tone, looking over at the girl from district 2, who had just sent a six-inch dagger flying strait into the eye of a training dummy.

Katara can’t help but agree. The female career tributes are all nothing short of incredible.

The siblings watch as the girl from 3 launches herself at a heavily-padded trainer, her elegant limbs flying at him at such speed Katara can hardly comprehend what is happening. The next thing Katara knows, the trainer is lying flat on the floor, the girl from 3 standing over him, smiling innocently, hands tucked neatly behind her back. She then sprung backwards, flipping upside down and walking back to the rest of the career tributes on her hands.

The sweet, girlish elegance of her performance could not fully disguise how deadly she must be.

“Good, aren’t they?”

The sudden voice makes Katara and Sokka jump.

Katara’s head whips round to see a boy about her own age crouching next to her. She hadn’t even been aware of him climbing up.

The boy grinned, “I’m sorry I scared you, I’m a very quiet climber. Force of habit.”

Katara smiled back, a little uncontrollably, “That’s okay. It’s nice to meet you”

“And you. My name’s Jet, district 7.” He replied bowing his head in mock formal-greeting.

The lumber district, thinks Katara. That explained his croco-kitten-like climbing abilities.

“Katara, district 11” She said, nodding her head back, “And this is my brother, Sokka.”

Jet’s grin melted into an sympathetic grimace, “Oh… I’m so sorry, I hoped you guys just happened to look really similar…”

Katara shrugged, “It’s okay.”

“Well it isn’t really…” Murmured Sokka. Katara gave him a harsh look, silencing him before he could say anything else.

“And it’s not like we’re the only ones,” Said Katara, glancing over at the siblings from 1, who were now sparing with each other viciously under the watchful eye of their mentor.

“Actually, that’s exactly why I wanted to talk to you two.” Said Jet, with another charming smile, “My district partner and I don’t want to be facing those careers in a two-on-six, so we’ve decided that we ought to even out the competition a little.”

“What do you mean by that?” Asked Sokka, a suspicious edge in his voice.

“I mean we should form our own pack, bigger and better than theirs, and I want you guys to be a part of it!”

Sokka scoffed rudely, “Get real, even if every single other tribute comes together, that lot would still obliterate us!” He said, a huge blast of fire from the district 1 tributes helpfully underlining his point.

Jet shrugged, “Well if that’s what you think, that’s your lookout. But if I was you, I’d re-consider. Five and six have already agreed. Nine refused, but we’re working on eight and ten.”

Then, with the air of a warrior drawing out a hidden sword so far concealed in battle, Jet said, “And, we’ve got the airbenders.”

And with that, he leapt off the ledge, landing neatly on all fours, before springing back up and re-joining his new group.

“I don’t trust him.” Was the first thing Sokka said to Katara.

“Yeah I could tell,” Replied Katara, “There was no need to be so rude to him. I think he’s got the right idea, joining with the other districts.”

“But didn’t Pakku say not to? He did make it pretty clear that we can’t trust anyone in that arena.” Said Sokka, “Although…”

He trailed off suddenly, his face clouding over as he thought.

“What?” Demanded Katara

“Well, I’m just trying to remember… I’m sure there’s a reason Pakku thinks having allies is a bad idea… I just can’t quite…”

It hits them both at the same moment.

Despite the fact that they were fifty years old, the Capitol had aired re-runs of the 23^rd Hunger Games a few times over the last ten years. They had become famous for featuring one of the most vicious career packs in Hunger Games history. Katara remembers them well.

Six deadly firebenders from districts one, two and three had dominated the competition, burning their way  down to the final eight within days. The only two other contestants left in the arena had been the pair from district 10. The boy, a skilled water bender, the girl, a skilled healer.

Both had struggled through their games, the boy had sustained a serious burn from one of the firebenders which the girl had had to fix, but by the 8^th day, the boy was ready to finfish off the career pack.

The district 10 pair created a plan in which the girl was going to trick the career pack into retreating towards the giant lake in the centre of the arena and ambush them. The girl was to create a water-whip barrier around the careers while the boy would freeze the water at the edges of the lake, making it impossible for them to escape. The plan was to then simply to freeze the firebenders to the floor, and pick them off one by one.

The time came to attack. The boy rushed at the firbenders, sending an ice spike into the heart of one, and badly wounding another. Just as the girl was meant to trap the careers, she turned aimed her water whip a the boy, trapping him.

The firebenders shot blasts of heat at the dome, turning it into a cage of boiling steam that the boy couldn’t escape from.

The show had then cut back to a clip of the girl from district 10 begging the firebenders for mercy. Their price, her help in eliminating the only non-career tribute to have scored a 10 in training. The male tribute from the girl’s district.

Just as the girl began to shrink the dome of water, it suddenly turned to ice, shattering the boiling trap into an array of ice-shards that he flung at the surrounding tributes. Two firebenders were impaled by thin shards of ice, another slipped, cracking his skull against a rock.

The girl and boy from 10, once allies, now enemies, turned to each other. Both are far stronger than the other had realised.

The girl suddenly unleased a new water whip, flicking it at the boy, who re-directed it with brutal precision. Their ensuing duel was fast, vicious and deeply personal.

The last remaining firebender took a swipe at the both of them, half-crazed with betrayal, and strike a crushing blow to the boys shoulder, but the boy slashed back at her with his water whip, spending her head spinning from her shoulders.

Finally, it was just him and the girl.

She made one last desperate attempt to finish him. Drawing in all the water surrounding her she created a massive tidal wave, ready to crash down on her district partner. By now the boy had sunk to his keens, clutching his heavily bleeding shoulder. He is half-dead already.

Just as the girl brought the water over her head, the boy sprung up, bending the water around the girl and freezing it in place, trapping her in a coffin of ice. For the smallest f moments, he hesitated.

Then he shattered the coffin, ending the life of the girl who betrayed him.

It had just dawned on Katara and Sokka that the boy who stood alone is his arena, surrounded by the bodies of enemies and traitors, was Pakku.

“Well then, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why he doesn’t want us getting too cosy with any of the other tributes” Said Sokka, “Or each other, for that matter.”

“Yeah I get it but… I still think having allies is a good idea! The girl saved Pakku’s life earlier on in their games, even if she did betray him later on. Pakku’s just bitter.”

“You’re right. Besides, its Pakku, if I was his ally, I’d be desperate to betray him too!”

“Exactly.” Replied Katara, smiling, “So… does that mean you’ll joining Jet with me?”

Sokka rolled his eyes again, “Fine. But on one condition.”

“Anything.”

“The moment either of us senses anything even slightly off about Jet, any strange plans, any suspicious behaviour, we leave him and his allies, and we don’t come back. Do you promise me you’ll do that?”

Katara huffs out a sigh, wishing her brother would be a little less dense, couldn’t he see how harmless Jet was? The poor guy was probably every bit as terrified as Katara herself was. But she knew what Sokka was like, no deal without compromise.

“ I promise.”

They climb back down, and head over to where Jet and his district partner were standing.

They are happy that Katara and Sokka have chosen to join them, and Jet quickly introduces the two to the rest of the group.

This is how Katara ends up meeting the female tribute from district 10.

She is eighteen, tallish, with dark skin and long, wavy-brown hair; she is the only other water bender in the tribute pool besides Katara, and her name is Hama.

Chapter Text

Chapter VII

Since joining Jet and his allies, Katara’s time in training had improved significantly.

First, and most exciting of all, she had found herself a waterbending teacher. And it was all thanks to Jet.

They had been walking back to the tribute accommodation after the first day of training, Sokka and the girl tribute from 6 walking behind them, not talking to each other.

“So your from the old Water Tribes, right?” Asked Jet.

Katara grasped, shocked and a little scared that Jet would mention the pre-Panem world so openly.

Jet rolled his eyes, “What? Even they can’t deny history.” He glared pointedly at two passing Dai Li agents, both of whom ignored him, heads bowed, not lowering themselves to listen to the incessant prattle of the district brats. “So, are you a waterbender then?”

“Yes.” Said Katara suddenly finding herself blushing, “I’m no good though.”

“I’m sure that’s not true!”

“Well it is. No one ever taught me properly and my mentor doesn’t want to me learn.”

“Well that’s stupid.”

“I know!” Said Katara loudly, angrily, then she continued more quietly, a little embarrassed at her outburst, “Its unfair, but I can’t do anything about it”

“Well…” Said Jet, slowly. He had a certain way of saying things that made Katara feel as though he was bestowing some grand and important secret upon her. It made her feel excited. “I think I know who can help you, even if the Capitol sifu’s won’t…”

“Who?” Asked Katara, hope rising in her chest like a bubble of warmth.

“The waterbender from 10, Hama. I’ve seen her in action, and I’ve got to say, she’s pretty good. I bet she’d be up for teaching you a thing of two.”

Katara had to fight the urge to throw her arms around Jet’s neck. She settled for a broad smile instead, hoping her blush wasn’t too obvious.

So that was how the next day, Katara spent much of her training in a little windowless side room, practicing waterbending with Hama.

Katara liked her new teacher; they had a lot in common, both being from poor districts with ice-cold climates. Hama was about a year and a half older than Katara, having turned eighteen just a few days before the Reaping. District 10 provided fish and seafood for Panem, and Hama had been working in the district canary for most of her life, packing sardines, mackerel and other kinds of fatty fish into their oily metal containers.

It was more common to learn waterbirding in 10, as it was useful for catching fish, and every school in the district taught it to those willing to learn. But as Katara was well aware, only boys learned to fight. Hama had gotten around the issue of her gender by watching the boy’s practicing whenever she could, doing her best to learn based of what she had seen, practicing outside her home in the dead of night, not wanting to be seen breaking ancient customs by her superstitious neighbours.

The result? A fast, viscous and meticulously accurate waterbender who could knock over training dummy over at twenty paces. Katara was completely in awe of Hama, and desperate to learn more.

They had begun to with the basics. Pushing and pulling water between them, gradually building up speed, changing the water to ice as they sent it away from them, then back into water to catch it again, timing the hand-over between sender and receiver perfectly.

They began to talk as they bent, Katara beginning to relax into the smooth flowing motions.

They talked about their lives back home, Katara telling Hama about dad and Gran Gran and mom and Nutha and Niyok, and Hama plying Katara with stories from 10, of fish markets and ‘fair-voyage’ dances and sipping hot, peppery cockle stew. They spoke of their time in the capitol, and Hama agreed with Katara that yes, being here was pretty terrifying, but she could hardly say that they had been having a bad time of it. Hama had found the treatment centre every bit as delightful as Katara had.

“I loved your costume,” Hama said, “Your designer’s a genius. You looked like a living ice sculpture. I was so jealous…”

Katara blushed, “Thank you! My designer is lovely. But you looked incredible too! That pearl headdress was beautiful!”

Hama had been dressed in swathes of iridescent fabric that glimmered like fish scales. Shells decorated her long hair, and robes of pearls adored her head and shoulders. Hama had said that her costume was, according to her stylist, based off of the ‘traditional district 10 myth of the sea-siren’. No such myth existed in 10, but Hama and Katara agreed that the beauty of the costume was all that really mattered.

In the afternoon, they returned to the small room again for more training. Katara had been worried that they would get caught, but if Pakku has suspicions as to what they were doing, he was not making it obvious.

“Remember, half of waterbending is pure instinct. It’s what you and I were born to do Katara” Hama said, a slightly off-putting glint in her eyes. “When your body tells you to do something, you must follow that urge.”

Katara nodded, unsure where her sifu was going with this.

“I’ve watched enough games to know that we can’t guarantee that there will be water readily available.”

An image of a huge orange sun riding high in the sky over a dusty desert, ground cracked with dehydration, flashes before Katara’s eyes.

“If that’s the case this year, we’ll be all but defenceless.”

This made sense to Katara. Firebenders could conjure their element out of nothingness, and every arena pretty much guaranteed plenty of earth and air. It was waterbenders who would left be most vulnerable.

“So I had this idea…” Hama said, taking something out of her pocket, “Absolutely every living thing in this world contains water, right?”

She opened her hand to reveal a bright red flower, slightly crushed from it’s stay in Hama’s pocket.

“It took me a while but I finally figured out that it’s possible to control this water, and bend it out of the plant.”

She moved her hand over the rumpled flower in her palm, fluttering and moving her fingers up and down. As she did so, the crinkled petals of the flower smoothed out, unfurling and spreading outwards as if being filled with some unseen lifeforce. Then, in the blink of an eye, Hama moved her hand again, drawing the water from the flower, causing it to wither, it’s vibrancy turned to mud-brown.

“Wow…” Katara breathed.

“The possibilities are endless!” Said Hama, almost to herself, as she stared down at the dried mass of petals in her hand.

For a moment, Katara caught something odd in the older girl’s expression. An imprecise flicker of… coldness. Rage. Madness, even. Katara is suddenly and fiercely dragged into a memory from 11, from her days in the underground hospital.

A little girl had been rushed into the hospital, both legs broken, crushed by a truck transporting peacekeepers to the harbour. She should have died instantly from shock and blood-loss, but the little girl clung to life with a determination many in district 11 lacked.

The two doctors on duty that day knew it was pointless trying to save the legs, the left of which having been broken in five places, and the right all but shattered. Amputation was the only option. There was no anaesthetic because the hospital could not afford anaesthetic. The girl was on the brink of unconsciousness anyway. Katara had been charged with helping to hold her down while her legs were removed at the hip.

It was a horrible, drawn-out process, and after two hours had passed, Katara helped carry the girl to an empty hospital bed. She did not make it through the night.

But what stuck in Katara’s memory the most wasn’t the girls screams, or the blood, or the sight of the jagged, bloodied teeth of the bone-saw. What stuck with her was the look on the girl’s father’s face when he learned of his daughter’s death. A terrible, grief-stricken look of pure rage.

Moment’s after hearing the news, the man had stormed out of the hospital, gone strait up to the nearest peacekeeper, and launched a brutal attack that sent the peacekeeper to the ground.

This must have been a serious offence because Dai Li agents had descended in seconds, and the man was dead before the tears could dry off his face.

Something had been taken from Hama. Something precious. Just as something precious had been taken from that man in 11. But Katara wasn’t going to be the one to ask Hama what that something was, so they went back to training.

The time for individual assessment from the Game Makers comes round far quicker than Katara could have anticipated. The last few days of training with Hama, occasionally intercepted by bouts of furious eating with Sokka have passed her by so fast that she had barely had time to think upon the Games to come. Life in the Capitol is so far removed from the drudgery of district 11 that Katara’s mind has been fully occupied 24 hours a day, but she could hardly say that she hadn’t been enjoying it.

Besides, the knowledge that she had a group of at least thirteen other allies combined with the way that Hama’s careful guidance had caused her waterbending skills to flourish like never before had given Katara more hope for the Games ahead than she ever would have expected.

As she sat with the other tributes, she glanced at her allies. They were, in her opinion, a fairly impressive group.

Jet had managed to wrangle districts five, six, eight, ten, eleven and twelve into joining him. The pair from 5, the livestock district, were young, fourteen and thirteen, but they well fed and well-equipped for the games with strong stomachs for the sight of blood.

Sokka had become fond of district 6, the district that produced every item of clothing worn by the people of Panem. The twelve-year old Lee and seventeen-year-old Suki were being mentored by Kyoshi, she of second quarter-quell fame. Lee was young, but fierce, and Suki, despite coming from one of the poorest districts, was an incredible fighter, dangerous in hand-to hand combat and deadly with a war fan. She had told Sokka that Kyoshi herself, she of second Quater Quell fame, had trained her. Katara could see why Sokka liked her so much.

Jet and his district partner Smellerbee were both muscled and strong from their time working as lumberjacks in the woods of 7. While Sokka still refused to trust Jet, even he had to admit that Jet was everything you could want int a tribute. Fast, athletic, strong, and sharp as the twin hook swords he fought with. He could light a fire, fell a tree, build a shelter and skin a rabbit with his eyes closed, and he was a fantastic leader.

“…and that’s just what we need!” Katara had told Sokka one evening, her eyes shining, “A really good leader.”

Sokka had just rolled his eyes and looked away.

District 8 were a little less impressive, coming from hard farming lives, but Katara had a deep appreciation for Song, the female tribute, and her excellent knowledge of plants and herbs with healing properties.

However, it was the pair of airbender’s that truly entranced the rest of the group. Airbender’s had always had a certain, well, air about them. Katara had learned that it was old Earth district superstition that Air Benders always brought good luck to tributes in the arena. Katara hoped that this would turn out to be true. Certainly, the pair were highly skilled benders, especially Aang, the youngest of the two. He was only just fifteen, but a pretty incredible bender. His partner, Meiling, was eighteen, and always had a far-off, dazed sort of look in her eye.

Katara had watched them air bend together, walking round and round in widening and shrinking spirals, blasting moving targets across the room, floating up and down the climbing wall with a casual kind of elegance that despite her rapid progress, Katara’s bending skills could never achieve.

As the first person goes in, the girl from district 1, Aang leans over to whisper in Katara’s ear.

“What have you got planned?” he asks with a grin.

“I think I’m just goanna try and show them my waterbending, knock a few dummies over, nothing fancy…”

“I’m sure you’ll be brilliant!” The younger boy exclaimed, “Although, I think you should show them your healing too”

“Really?” Asks Katara. She and Sokka has dismissed healing as a possibility of what to show the Game Makers, deciding that it was too simple, not flashy enough to catch anyone’s attention.

“Yeah! I think it’s unique, I mean, what other bender can heal the injuries they cause?”

Katara smiled warmly. She liked Aang, and the way his words were always full of simple, genuine kindness.

By the time Katara is called in, she feels shot through with nerves. She knows she won’t be able to impress a group of bored, increasingly tipsy Capitol citizens with her meagre bending skills. She wracks her brain to think of something, anything, that might make her stand out, get her a score that would result in good sponsors, but nothing comes to her.

Then it is time. She enters a large, well lit room that is practically identical to the rest of the training centre. At one end of the room, the Game Makers sit at a huge wooden table. Avoxes dressed elaborately as cats and birds mingle amongst them, pouring glasses of wine and sake, handing out sweetmeats and other minuscule delicacies on silver trays.

No-one in this living painting of a Capitol cocktail party gives Katara so much as a glance as she walks to the centre of the room.

Only one man seems to be more interested in her than the food. He stands at the centre of the group, well lit by warm yellow light. He wears simple black robes, his only Capitol decoration being a long black moustache and golden cuffs that shine in the low lighting. His piercing green eyes stare down at Katara, scrutinising her every movement. Katara is sure she has seen that cold emerald gaze somewhere before, felt those same eyes bore into her body on another occasion, but she can’t think when.

She begins by taking some water from a metal through in one corner of the room and slashing at some training dummies. The sound of her waterbending turns a few bewigged and befrilled faces towards her, but only for a moment.

So she tries again. She creates water whips and spins discs of ice through the air. She knocks over dummies and slashes at targets. Still no reaction.

She only has a few minutes left. Her allies in the arena would depend on her getting sponsors as much as she would. If she was going to do anything to get the Game Makers’ attention, it would have to be drastic.

She walks slowly over to a wall holding several knifes, the blades catching the light from the Game maker’s table, making them gleam with potential. Katara selects one that is short, but deadly sharp.

Holding the blade in her hand, she walks back to the centre of the room. She raises her left arm above her head and steels herself, biting her lip. Then she drags the sharpened edge of  her knife down her left wrist, following the faint purple line of her vein.

Blood trickles down her arm, making the black sleeve of her training shirt damp and sticky.

A few Game Makers look up, surprised. But years of Hunger Games mean the sight of blood is not nearly enough to excite them.

Katara’s heart pounds and she is suddenly unsure of her plan, the pain in her arm causing adrenaline to surge through her body. But there is no turning back now, so she forces herself to walk back over to the trough of water and wrap some around her left wrist.

Katara had only used water healing once, on herself, alone, in a moment of intense panic, fear and pain. Never had she performed the feat in front of another person, let alone a roomful of terrifying Game Makers, even ones practically incapacitated with drink. But again, she could not back out. She could either heal herself, or die from blood loss. The choice was hers.

Approximately six Game Makers watch as Katara focuses all her energy on the open flesh of her forearm, forcing the skin to knit itself back together, her qui to re-regulate itself. The process takes longer than she expected, but in the end, she is successful.

“Thank you,” She says as she leaves, her small voice echoing throughout the room, plaintive and unimportant.

Still, her job is done. All she has to do now is wait for her score.

And so the scores come. Districts one through three get the typical top scores, the tall earthbender from 4 gets a ten, his blind counterpart a five. Suki manages to get an eight, an impressive score for a district 6 girl. Katara beams with genuine pride when Jet gets an nine. Most old the old Earth districts get fives and sixes, with a few fours and a three. Hama gets an eight. Sokka scrapes a seven. Katara gets a four.

Pakku’s look of disappointed anger is bad enough, but what makes Katara want to fall through the floor is the fact that even slicing through her own flesh with that vicious blade wasn’t enough to get her so much as a six.

That’s it, thinks Katara miserably, it’s over. There is no way I am getting any sponsors, there is no way Jet will have me as an ally, and there is no way Pakku will even consider helping me at all. I’m finished.

She walks back to her room, barely able to raise her head. She throws herself onto her eiderdown bed and begins to cry, releasing her frustration and embarrassment and fear into the soft duvet.

Five minutes later, Sokka bursts in, interrupting her. Katara sits up slowly, ready for her brother’s sympathetic words.

But none come.

Sokka looks furious, “What happened?” He demanded, “How did you score that low?”

“Sokka!” Katara gasps, the unfairness of his words knocking all the breath out of her, “It’s hardly my fault-“

“It’s completely your fault! If you had spent more than thirty seconds training with me, learning things that might actually help us out there and impress the Game Makers, then maybe you would have done a little better!”

“Oh, so your saying that I should have spend my days watching you try to impress Suki instead of actually learning how to defend myself?”

Sokka scowls, “I’m not saying that-“

“Really? Because that’s sure what it sounds like! Admit it, the only reason you didn’t want me leaning was because Jet suggested it!”

At the mention of the other boy’s name, Sokka’s face darkened, “Fine! You’re right Katara, completely right, as you always are. I don’t like Jet, and neither does Suki, and we do not want to go into that arena allied to him.”

Katara gasped again, furious that her suspicions had been confirmed.

“And,” Continued Sokka, “I don’t think you should stay allies with him either. I know you have a crush on him or whatever-“

“I do not have a crush on him you sexist hog-monkey. I can like a boy without wanting to kiss him! Just because I said he’s a better leader than you are, just because he got a better score in training than you, it doesn’t mean you have to hate him! You’re just jealous!”

“Fine.” Replied Sokka, voice quite, “Fine. I’m jealous, and you don’t have a thing for Jet. Whatever. I’m still not allying with him, he’s not a good guy. Trust me.”

“You can’t change my mind. I’m going with Jet, and frankly, I don’t care whether you do or not!” She didn’t mean it, but then, no one means the things they say in the heat of the moment. That ddoesn’t stop the words from having an effect though.

“Fine.” Said Sokka again, as he left Katara’s room

Chapter Text

Zuko- Part II

Zuko often dreamt of fire.

Bright orange and yellow flames flicking around his body, long hot hands grasping for him, just out of reach. Falling down, far down into a pit of flames that never seemed to end. Falling on and on, the world getting hotter and hotter, his body prickling painfully with heat, until the inferno would consume him, and the dream would end.

The dreams had come the day Mother had left, consuming his sleep and burning his brain. He couldn’t explain them, but over the years they had taught the firebender to fear his element.

Sometimes, on especially bad nights, the flames would burn bright, hot blue.

Such a dream came to Zuko on his last night in the Capitol.

If Zuko had been an average tribute, his twisted, anxious dreams of burning death would have been easily explainable. The fate of an average tribute entering into the Hunger Games would almost certainly be a violent, painful death, or slow, agonizing starvation. An average tribute came from a cold, hard life of hard work and poverty in some district factory, with limited arena-worthy skills. An average tribute would have just cause to experience fiery premonitions in their sleep.

But Zuko was not your average tribute. Zuko was a highly trained fighter who could count on one hand the number of Games skills he had not mastered. He need not fear being hunted down by the career district pack, he was the career district pack. Furthermore, he was one of the best in the career pack, he knew he was, and he had the 10-point score to prove it. He had been given every possible advantage, every reason to feel safe.

The last week or so of training had gone even better than he could have expected. He trained hard with Uncle and the other firebending sifu’s from the Capitol. Mai, Chan, Ruan Jon and Ty Lee, his career-trained allies were every bit as good as he was, though not very good company. Chan and Ruan Jon were stocky, muscled and pretty stupid, only capable of talking about weapons or women, with little capacity for anything else. Perhaps it was just as well Zuko didn’t like them, as he was fairly confident his new allies were not exactly planning on defending him to the death.

Ty Lee, with her perpetual optimism and almost fanatic attempts to flit with every man she came across, was an especially irritating presence, no matter how good she was at hand-to-hand combat. Mai was the least offensive of his allies, and Zuko found her blunt, no-nonsense attitude appealing to his own broodiness. And he was beginning to think that Mai might just like him too. Enough, hopefully, to not immediately turn on him the moment she could.  

But the fact was, he didn’t feel safe.

He knew why.

Zuko had sat down next to Azula on the leather sofa in their Capitol apartment, Father and Uncle standing behind them, the remains of their family gathered together to watch the announcement of the tribute training scores.

Zuko had faced the Game Makers first. They had greeted him warmly, recognising the son of a still very famous Career Victor who was well respected in the Capitol. Zuko’s hands had been shaking with uncontrollable nerves, but the moment he selected a pair of Pian Dao-made twin blades from the neat wrack of weapons, the years of training kicked in, and his arms and limbs seemed to move almost of their own accord, following the perfect patters of attack and defence that had been beaten into him at the academy.

He ended up with a ten. Uncle beams at him with genuine pride, but Zuko only has eyes for his father. Ozai opened his mouth, and hope rises unbidden in Zuko’s chest. Finally, after all these years of fighting, Zuko had won his prize. His father was proud of him. Zuko waited, straining to hear his father’s words of praise.

But before they can come, Zuko watches as Azula makes Hunger Games history by scoring a perfect twelve.

He supposed it was inevitable, not just father and uncle’s ecstatic reactions, but Azula’s score in the first place. Zuko knew he was good, and he could tell when other firebenders were good. Azula, however, was something else entirely.

It had started when they were children, when Azula would demonstrate some small act of firebending that many children older than Zuko would have struggled to achieve. Then when she entered the Academy and begun formal firebending lessons, it soon became obvious that she supposed every other student in the school. She had a deadly, precise form of bending, intense and fast, aided by near-constat training with Father.

She had been about thirteen when she began producing blue flames. By then, it seemed to Zuko that the entirety of district 1 knew that Azula, the firebending protégée, was destined for Hunger Games greatness.

 But until that terrible day a year or so ago, when Zuko was barred from the games that he should have been victor of, Azula being better than him hadn’t mattered. He could ignore it, and focus on nothing but himself and his training.

But now fate had determined that he was going to go into the arena with Azula, and Zuko knew deep down that in doing so, he was going to get burned.

The knowledge of this had hovered around Zuko like a malevolent supernatural presence, forever at his back, silently laughing at him, but never fully acknowledged by its torment-ee. But Azula’s score had changed that. The presence took on flesh and bone, it grew and expanded until it was impossible to ignore, leaving him with one single, burning truth. Zuko was never going to win these games, not while Azula was a player.

Soon after the final tributes’ scores are announced, Azula is swept out of the room by the district 1 Capitol escort to be prepped for interview practice, leaving Zuko alone in the cavernous living room with his father, uncle having rushed out moments earlier.

“There is one thing I have always thought of, when I compare you with your sister, Zuko.”

Zuko jumped ever so slightly, he hadn’t been expecting father to even acknowledge him after his performance had been rendered so subpar.

“Azula is a child who, through some happy twist of fate, was simply born incredibly lucky. I knew, from the moment I first looked into her eyes as a new-born infant, that she would grow up to be someone great.”

He paused, revelling in his speech, “When I first held you, however, I had no such feeling. Infect, your mother and I were unsure if you were a firebender at all. You were a weak, sickly baby, lucky to be born.”

Father stared Zuko down, daring him to leave. Zuko forced himself to look his father in the eye, body trembling with adrenaline.

“When you go into the arena, I expect you to triumph and kill many. But your victims will be easy kills, peasants from the mud and ice districts who couldn’t tell a sword from a chopstick. It will be down to Azula to take out the real threats. But I suppose that won’t ,matter much to you, my son, as I don’t especially expect you to last past the bloodbath.”

Completely thrown by what his father’s words were not-so-subtly implying, Zuko spends the rest of the day in a daze of fear. Never had he felt so devastatingly unsure of himself, and that was saying something.

Half an hour or so before he was to make his way to the TV Studio for his pre-game interview, Zuko was in his room. He paced up and down on the soft carpet.

I am going to die, he thought, for the first time in his life, I am going to die a simple, inglorious death and then everything I’ve ever worked for will be for nothing. I am going to die in that arena.

He was too hot. He needed air. Panic was rising in his thought, his eyes prickling with tears not yet spilled. He flung the doors of to the outdoor balcony open, the shock of cold mountain air hitting him in the face. He moved quickly towards the edge of the balcony, wanting to lean over the side and look down at the city below.

Perhaps he wanted to jump.

He moved over to the edge, sicking out his hand to grasp the wrought-iron railing. A sudden electrical shock pulsed through him, biting at his outstretched hand like a frightened dog would. Zuko jumped back, realizing that his little balcony must be surrounded by an electrical forcefield, invisible to the eye.

The pain makes the tears fall from his eyes and he falls to the ground, clutching his hand to his breast. He sobs, angry at the world and in pain. He realises h just how little he really wants to be there. He is taken back to a moment on the train, about a week ago, when Uncle had suggested that perhaps he shouldn’t have go into the Games, and lead a normal life instead. It had seemed like an insult at the time, but now, Zuko wished desperately that he had listened. Better an average firebender than a dead one.

He remained the on the floor for quite some time, but he rose eventually, wiping his eyes.

He realised with a sudden shock that he was being watched.

Dark blue eyes look down on him from a balcony on the building opposite, a few floors up. It was the girl from 11.

His face burned with angry embarrassment. How dare she look in his misery! He shot a furious glare at her and stormed back into his bedroom, the girl’s cry of “Wait!” fading into silence as he heaved the glass door shut.

His interview comes and goes in a blur of bright stage lights and studio audience laughter. He barely remembers what he says to the ridiculously be-wigged Caeser Flickerman. His mind is pounding with terrible images of how he might die. He feels sick.

When he is finally released from the mild torture of the interview, he collapses on a chair in the post-interview room, completely alone but for a few avoxes standing at the door. He rips off his jacket, unable to bear the heat rising through his body, and puts his head in his hands, stilling himself.

A familiar voice blares from the small TV hung on the wall opposite him.

“Now my dear, I must say that you seem incredibly confident about wining these games! What makes you so certain that you will be crowned victor?”

“Because Caeser,” Says Azula, smiling softly at the camera, “I’m a people person.”

“Yet another skill on your fantastic repertoire! But tell me, I must know, what does being a people person have to do with wining the games?”

Her tiger-grin widens, “I look around at my opponents and fellow fire-district tributes, and I realise that, while they may all appear different, they share one crucial thing in common.”

“And what is that?” Asks Caeser, apparently enraptured.

“They lack my drive. They lack my confidence. They lack my innate ability to succeed at whatever I do. That is why they are going to lose and I am going to win. It’s written all over their faces.”

Oratorical skills were also something Azula had excelled at the Academy.

Half an hour later and the post-interview room is getting crowded. Azula is surrounded by her allies, Ty Lee singing praises at her.

“Azula that was fantastic! You- er, well what you said was pretty and poetic but also really scary in a good way! And I think Caeser really liked you.”

An almost imperceptible flush of flattered pride rose on Azula’s cheeks, but it melted away rabidly, as if at her command.

“Thank you Ty Lee” She said, “You were brilliant too.”

Ty Lee giggled coyly, “Oh I wasn’t nearly as good as you!”

Zuko rolled his eyes, deciding to tune out the Azula-adoration session that was currently going on. Instead, he forced his mind through his firebending katas.

Attack. Inhale. Kick. Release. Exhale. Arms up. Defend. Block. Attack. Inhale. Release. Exhale. Arms up. Defend. Block.

It calms him as his mind moves to the imaginary rhythm. He gets so lost in pretending to move through steady paces he knows as well as he knows how to talk, that he barely notices the room gradually filling up with more and more tributes as the interviews go on.

He does not see the blind girl from district 4 get shoved into a wall by the boy from 7, nor does he see the girl from 6 and the boy from 11 holding hands. He does not that Ty Lee never took her eyes off his sister, or the fact that the girl from 8 was sobbing uncontrollably into her hands. He is oblivious to everything but his katas.

Stance. Bend knee. Inhale. Right hand punch. Left hand punch. Exhale. Rest. Stance. Bend knee. Inha-

He is interrupted by, of all things, the sound of signing coming from the TV.

“I'll bring the news
When I've danced off my shoes
When my body's closed down
When my boat's run aground”

The voice is strong and pure and powerful, with a rich vibrato that could have been natural, or simply down to nerves. Either way, the effect it had on the room of chattering children was immediate. Zuko looked up to see every other pair of eyes fixed on the TV, and the girl standing on stage singing.

Zuko didn’t know the girl’s name, only that she was the girl tribute from 12. He catches Azula’s eye across the room, and she frowns in confusion, Zuko can see her trying to assess the situation before her, a little unsure of herself. It was after all, fairly unusual, tributes might cry, or try to be funny, or intimidating, or flirtatious, or serious or timid, but no one had ever sung before.

The girl drew breath, ready to continue, when suddenly the screen goes blank. The room full of tributes jump as the girl’s sudden scream echoes through the building. A dai li agent enters, ordering them to leave and return to their apartments.

Zuko is swept out of the room by the crushing wave of tributes. He turns to look for Azula, but she is no where to be seen.

Two more dai li agents burst out of the door to the TV studio, dragging a pile of orange fabric.

They throw the girl from 12 to the ground with a heavy thud. A small, skinny boy- her district partner, Zuko presumes- rushes over to the girl, trying to lift her shoulders, shaking her desperately and sobbing.

Zuko’s heart begins to thump with fear and adrenaline as the girl from district 11, the girl from the balcony, rushes over to the fallen tribute.

Zuko draws near, torn between wanting to help the girl, who had blood gushing from a wound hidden in her long brown hair, and not wanting to get mixed up in whatever anti-Capitol movement she was clearly involved in. He took another step towards them.

The district 12 girl was still conscious, dazedly singing the rest of her song in a  slow, slurred voice that nevertheless remained perfectly in tune.

“When I'm pure like a dove
When I've learned how to love
Right here in the old therebefore
When nothing is left anymore”

The two other tributes were trying to heave the girl to her feet, but they were struggling. Zuko stood still, watching them.

The girl from 11 looked up at Zuko, noticing him for the first time.

Her eyes were full of panicked concern as she yelled, “Help us then!”

Zuko couldn’t move. His terrible ability to be decisive returning with a vengeance.

“Please!” Begged the boy from 12, tears streaking his stage makeup.

Zuko took one last look at the wilting, desperate trio of district trash, and turned away, he would have nothing to do with this pathetic attempt at rebellion.

He walked back up the miles of corridor to his apartment, the reproachful eyes of his fellow tributes burning in his mind.

Chapter Text

Part III: The Arena of Plenty

Chapter VIII

Katara woke up gently in the soft, warm embrace of the Capitol bed, and for a moment, she feels totally at peace.

Then she remembers the night before.

How those dai li agants had descended upon Meiling, clamping a stone muzzle over her mouth wish such force that she was knocked backwards, blood spilling from a gaping wound at the back of her head. The had hurled her to the floor, orange tulle fluttering around her body as she fell, as if in slow motion.

How the colour had drained from Aang’s as he watched his partner fall.

How every other tribute had left as soon as they could, leaving Katara alone with the airbenders. She had done what she could for Meiling with water she bent out of a nearby houseplant, but her hands were shaking and Aang was asking too many questions and so she had simply heaved the older girl to her feet, plaing on taking her back to the apartment and throwing herself at the mercy of the district 12 mentor.

That was when she saw him. The boy from her nightmare who had become the boy from the balconey, whose reagal, tear-stained face had looked down on her with a look that was more fear than embarrassment. She had yelled at him to help, tring to convey in a single word that she and Aamg alone could not possibly carry Meiling all by themselves, and, for a moment, she thought he would stay. But then he turned away, leaving Katara to drag Meiling back to her apartment.

She thinks that perhaps she should have expected that.

How Jet had waited at the door of her and Sokka’s apartment, and pulled her into his arms, resting his head on hers as she shook.

“It was disgusting, what they did,” He had said, his voice muffled by Katara’s hair, “I hate everything about this place.”

“Jet… what they did to her… I don’t think she’s going to make it in the arena” Said Katara, the stream of tears not leaving her face.

“Shhh…” Said Jet, stroking the bare skin of her neck that her strapless evening dress revealed, “You did what you could. And maybe it’s for the best if we have one less person to worry about.”

A tiny part of Katara’s dizzy, panic-drunk brain wanted to protest this, but she was too scared and too tired to argue. They parted, and Katara drifted into the living room, still warm from the heat of Jet’s body being close to hers. She felt odd, detached, and so weary that she felt she could have fallen asleep standing up.

But Pakku’s thunderous precsence in the living room blocked her from the respite sleep might bring. He was standing quite still, face unnaturally white with anger. He did not raise his fist, as so many men do when angered, nor did he yell, he simply pointed one long, trembling finger to the space in front of him.

Come here and face the consequences of your actions.

She had walked over, Pakku’s tractor-beam stare raking over her, picking at her soul. It was like wading through thick, dense oil, but she got there eventually.

Pakku regarded her for what felt like hours before drawing a deep breath and beginning.

“Do you happen to remember the one thing I asked of you at the beginning of the week?” He had asked, simply and almost pleasantly.

“Yes,” Said Katara. She did remember, she remembered all too well.

“And would you like to tell me what my one simple request was?” He asked, his voice icy with sarcasm.

And just like that, Sokka’s words return to her for the second time that week. Show no fear. She raised her head and dragged her dark blue eyes up to meet Pakku’s ice-chip ones.

“You asked me not to embarrass you.”

“Correct. One simple task that even the most low-minded of your kinsmen could obey. Apart from you, apparently. You, Katara, have failed me, and in failing me, have failed yourself. You helped a rebel.” He spat the word out as if it were poisoned wine, “And you must face the consequences.”

The silence of that Capitol living room, with its warm central heating and rich hues of gold, black and green dripping with velvet, could have cut through flesh and bone.

“Do you know what the dai li would do to those who resisted the Capitol, during the dark days before the world was united?”

He did not bother to wait for her response.

“They starved them. They locked the rebel-scum in caves made of crystal and let them either turn on one another, or simply rot away from hunger. And that is what I am going to do to you, Katara the healer. You will not receive anything from me in that arena. You could be on the brink of starvation, desperately in need of my help, but I shall give you nothing. To survive in life, you must learn to ignore the plea of those weaker than yourself. Do you understand me?”

Katara knew fully well what she should do. She should bow her head and say “Yes, Master Pakku” and scuttle out of the room like the good, submissive little girl that she knows Pakku wants to see.

But hate had been bubbling up in Katara’s chest like the oil that bubbles up from the sea bed around district 11, thick and black and cloying. Staining. Tainting. Unignorable.

“Actually, Pakku, I do not understand you.” She said, her voice began calm, but grew in a rising crescendo to almost a shout, “ I cannot physically comprehend how someone like you, who stated off life in the districts, every bit as badly-off as me, maybe even worse-off, can stand here and tell me that you are not going to help me in these games. What kind of a monster can sit back and watch a child go through an experience like the hunger games, when you know fully well just how terrible they are? I- I genuinely can’t- I can’t-“

She had begun to loose stream. She gasped, struggling to catch her breath.

“How can you refuse to teach me to fight, and deny me food and sponsors when you know what it’s like to be in that arena?”

Pakku is staring at her with an expression Katara could not read. There was anger, of course, but also… something else. It couldn’t possibly be pride, but… well, that’s what it looked closest to.

“I think,” He said, “That you should get yourself to bed. You are obviously over-excited by what has happened today, and you should get some sleep before the games begin.”

Katara actually laughed out loud, “Oh now you’re willing to dish out the advice? Now you’ve become concerned for my wellbeing in the arena? Well, guess what, I am going to go to my room, but I sure as fuck won’t be getting any sleep. I won’t be getting a single moment of shut-eye because a sour, bitter old man decided that a carrying an unconscious girl back to her bedroom was a step too far, and so he decided to sever any hope of help for me in the arena.”

She has never felt this rage. In fact, Katara doesn’t think she had ever said that many words in a row to someone other than Sokka. She rages out of the living room, scowling violently at Sokka, who had poked his head out of his bedroom door to see what the commotion was about.

“Hey, Katara what in the name of agna are you yelling abou-“

But Katara had slammed the door to her bedroom shut before she could hear her brother finish his question.

She continued to move through her room, the momentum from the adrenaline still causing through her veins sending her strait out onto the balcony.

Then, as quickly as it came, all the fight rushes out of her, like water melting off an ice-cap.

She stood in the freezing night air, breathing hard and fast, her cheeks burning, exhausted. She began to shiver almost immediately, and so turned to go back inside, suddenly wanting to do nothing more that curl up under the blankets of her bed and shut out the world as best as she could.

She crawled into beg, not bothering to remove her make up, nor the midnight-blue ball gown Vibhi had put her in for her interview. When she had first but the dress on, its warm, velvet wight had seemed so comforting, like a protective aura surrounding her body. But after everything she had gone through that night, it’s magic charm seemed to have word off. The dress now felt crushing, inescapable.

She remembered the bliss of her first few days in this haven of luxury, how every person in the capitol seemed to smile at her in passive benevolence. How happy she had been to be there, to experience a life so completely different to anything she’d known before.

She had realised, lying bed that night, how absolutely wrong she had been. The glitter and glamour of this alien world had blinded her to the truth. The Capitol, and all those who support it, was nothing but a polar bear-dog trap painted gold and polished up.

She could have continued to buy into the fantasy, to believe that the capitol loved her, if only she had continued to act like one of its citizens, selfish and compliant, it’s not like it would have been difficult to do so. But she didn’t. So the moment she’d rebelled, the trap has lost its shine, stripped back to vicious, rusting metal that could catch her and never let her go.

Knowing sleep would not find her anytime soon, Katara decided to torture herself with thoughts of her family. She forces herself to see her mother’s face, her dad’s. Faces she would not see again. In one foul swoop, Pakku had condemned her, and possibly, her allies, to a Hunger Games with no Capitol support, and therefor, almost certain death.

Katara pictures the faces of the people of district 11, friends and foes alike. What she wouldn’t give to see any one of them again.

After hours of this, a dreamless sleep overcame her body, silencing all further thoughts.

And now, she was sitting up in bed, shaking, sweating, struggling to grasp the inconceivable  realisation that the event she had been taught to dread all her life, was soon to begin.

Her body feels leaden, weighed down with shame and horror at what she’d done. It wasn’t that she felt bad for saying those things to Pakku, not when they were so true. If she had hurt the man’s feeling (assuming he had any), then that caused her no guilt. The regret she was feeling was for the fact that her actions would now have so much impact. It is partly self-pity, partly burning guilt.

Having eaten a hurried breakfast at which Pakku had not even been present, she and Sokka, had been left to be taken to the arena.

Katara is growing desperate at this point.

“Sokka, when we get to the arena-“

“Katara, I know what you’re going to say,” her brother’s voice is hollow, and the bruises under his eyes tell Katara that he had just as rough a night as she did.

“We’ll be so much safer if we’re with Jet! He got a nine for spirit’s sake! Would you please just put away your pride and ally with us?” Katara is near tears as she speaks.

Her words have no effect. Sokka remains stonily silent, and before long, the pair are whisked off to a hovercraft.

The atmosphere inside the hovercraft is silently manic. Katara can practically hear twenty-three hearts beating in time with her own. A white-coated attendant jabs a thick needle into her forearm, explaining in brisk, laconic tones that this is the tracker that will allow the Capitol to see Katara’s exact location at all times.

The journey is over mercifully quickly. A boy from district 5 had vomited horribly, probably from nerves, and the sour smell was turning Katara’s own stomach.

Katara is shown into a small room which she thinks could be somewhere underground. Vibhi is waiting for her, a blessed sight. Vibhi is holding the uniform that Katara will wear for the remainder of her living days. It consists of black trousers made of a dense, slightly stiff material, a thin cotton shirt with a collar, not unlike the one she wore for training, light, plastic boots with thin soles and a bright blue waterproof jacket.

The two do not speak, they do not need to.

Katara makes to untie the necklace from her neck. She knew it was stupid, but she had worn it for the hovercraft flight, hoping that it would bring her the luck to have the hovercraft crash, or simply explode, so Katara could at least die on her own terms. Nothing would be better than the arena death that now awaited her.

“Don’t,” Says Vibhi, in her usual whispered tones, “You can keep it, they call it a ‘token’, lots of the tributes will have one.”

She gentle took the necklace from Katara and moved behind the younger girl, tying it neatly back the back of Katara’s neck.

Katara wants to weep with relief, but she bites the tears back. If she stats crying now, she doubts that she will ever be able to stop. Her grief has already grown into an ocean of sadness, and Katara feels it would pour out of her infinitely if given the chance.

Vibhi produces two cotton pads, and slowly wipes them over Katara’s eye-lids. Katara realises absently that she had never wiped off her make-up from the night before. Perhaps in another lifetime, she would have minded, but somehow, facing immanent death made her less fussy about her appearance.

Then Katara is stepping into a bizarre glass tube, Vibhi is kissing her cheek, her own tears beginning to fall. The platform Katara is stood on begins to rise, tantalizingly slowly.

The arena is gradually revealed. She at first Katara thinks she is in a bare field, wide and open, but as she rises up higher she sees trees, bushes, dense forest. To her left runs a river, and as she gains more height she can see a vast waterfall far off in the distance, rushing over giant, smooth boulders. Directly ahead of her is the vast cornucopia, which appears to be a shade of gold, although the sky above her is a light grey, so it does not shine.

She turns to her right and sees Sokka, also surveying the land.

With a start, she remembers that Jet had told her what to do when the timer went off. What on earth did he say to do? She wondered, desperately, Was it to get to high ground and wait for him there? Yes, that was it. But where is the high ground, is it the top of the water fall.

She looks over to where Jet and Smellerbee are standing. Jet catches her eye and gives her the smallest of grins. He nods gently to the waterfall, somehow knowing exactly what Katara had been thinking.

Okay. Thinks Katara, Okay. Good. The waterfall, good.

The vast forest and the obvious presence of water make her feel ten times better. She would be fine. She had a weapon already.

A huge red timer hovered above the cornucopia, counting down the seconds until the Games would begin. By now, every single tribute has risen. She looks over at the career pack, all of whom are staring fixedly at the bounty of weapons presented before them. The boy from 1, whose very face now sparks a flicker of rage in Katara, looks nervous, almost unwell.

Good, Thinks Katara, furiously.

Then all too quickly, trumpets sound.

The sound of the pounding feet of twenty-three desperate children fill Katara’s ears.

She springs off her platform, flying from the cornucopia as fast as she possibly can. She can already her the horrible sound of guts being spilled.

The inevitable has happened, although Katara somehow never though it would.

The Seventy-third Hunger Games have begun.

Chapter Text

Chapter X

“There were horrors enough, but it was the unexpected detail that threw him and afterwards would not let him go”- Ian McEwan, Atonement

For a few moments, nothing exists. All Katara knows, has ever known, and will ever know is the glistening rocks and playful, tumbling water that is her destination. It is as if her mind has reverted back to it’s prehistoric state. She notices nothing and thinks of nothing but the waterfall, and the amoebic speck of salvation it offers. For all of twelve seconds.

Then the world is knocked suddenly, devastatingly off balance. Her precious waterfall tumbles out of view and the next thing she knows, the boy from 1’s tall, lanky figure is looming over her, and her mind goes blank.

He raises a blade, no, two blades, each as wickedly sharp as the other.

This is it, thinks Katara, I can stop now. This boy is going to slit my throat. No point fighting it.

Then, with the inexplicable calmness and simple acceptance of a girl whose short life is about to be cut off completely, I am going to die. She does not want to fight it, she can only hope it is over soon.

He lunges down at her and for a moment, Katara thinks her death has come. She is still in her body, but she must be dead as she is covered in blood, hot and fresh. She is confused by the lack of pain, but she supposes that the dead cannot feel anything at all.

Her killer is still standing over her, speckled with blood, her blood. But he is not looking at his victim.

Knowing nothing can hurt her now, she is invincible, she is free! So she sits up to see what the boy from 1 is looking at.

The dead body of the male tribute from district 3 lies a few feet away from Katara, his neck bent at an almost perfect right angle to the rest of his body. The odd white appendage sticking out from his body turns out to be the top of his spine. No blood flows from the wound as there is no beat in the career tribute’s heart.

Some far-off part of Katara’s brain feels nauseated by this sight, and she instinctively reaches for her neck to clasp her mother’s necklace. That is when it occurs to her that her throat has in fact not been slit, and that she is very much still alive.

She is up in a moment, head spinning with a combination of relief and bitter disappointment that the whole thing is not over yet. The boy from 1’s distraction by the death of his ally gives Katara just enough time to grab a bulking black backpack that lies by the boy’s feet.

She shoots off towards the waterfall. She looks back only once, and what she sees is barely comprehensible. Katara watches as the tall, slender body of Meiling is jolted into the air, as if suspended by some terrible omnipotent being. A bright white light shines, illuminating the broken body of the girl from district 12. For a fleeting moment, she looks like a twisted portrait painting, with her long hair fanning out around her head, the hand-shaped bruise left my the Dai li framing her mouth, her grey eyes rolling manically, pointing towards the heavens.

The blue light intensifies and the airbender falls to the ground, landing in a smoking, crumpled heap.

It is a good thing Katara can’t stand to see who killed her ally, as it means she keeps running to safety.

She reaches the base of the waterfall, the screams coming from the cornucopia refusing to die out. Katara is just about to begin the long, slippery climb to the top of the waterfall, when a hand shoots out from behind the cascade of water and pulls her forcefully forward.

The freezing shock of cold water knocks the breath out of Katara, and this combined with the sudden plunge into total darkness makes her hands push back the person who grabbed her.

“Katara stop! It’s me!”

“Hama?” Katara says, relief flooding her chest.

“Quickly, we need you!”

Katara stumbles forward into the cave, trying not to slip on the damp, mossy rocks beneath her feet.

“W-what’s happening?”

“Its Smellerbee! That crazy knife-throwing girl got here. You need to heal her, now!”

No! Katara’s brain protests, Not now, can’t do it, don’t know how.

“Okay,” Is what she says

Hama pushes her roughly down, passing her some water to heal with. Holding the water in one hand, Katara feels for Smellerbee’s body on the floor. When she takes her hand away, it is wet with blood.

Moving her hand gently along the younger girls body, Katara traces the source of the blood to a gash just below Smellerbee’s shoulder. She feels the sharp blade of a small throwing dagger wedged deep in muscle and flesh. Somehow, not being able to see what she is doing helps Katara. The darkness of the cave makes it easier to shut out distractions and relax into the calm state she needs to be in to heal.

Though her hands are shaking and she is sweating from fear, Katara manages to make the water glow that soft, iridescent blue as she slowly staunches the flow of blood. Through the water, Katara can feel the beat of Smellerbee’s heart begin to slow.

Suddenly decisive, Katara instructs Hama to reach into the water and gently tug at the knife. It takes three long, drawn out minutes before Hama can get the blade out. Mercifully, Smellerbee fainted from the pain thirty seconds into the make-shift operation.

Hama finally extracts the blade, wiping it clean on her shirt.

Katara holds the water over the gaping mess of flesh, guiding the qi flow in Smellerbee’s body towards the wound, forcing the blood to clot.

“Give me the knife” Katara demands, and Hama hands it to her.

Katara uses the blade to scrape the thick, springy moss off the floor and packs it onto the wound, then, still using the knife, cuts a length of fabric off her shit to tie the moss in place. Katara sits back on her knees, panting hard.

“I think she’ll be okay for now.” She said.

“Thank you! Let me dry you.” Said Hama.

Katara feels Hama bend the icy water from her clothes and hair, drying her instantly. Katara’s breathing begins to slow, and she becomes a little more aware of her surroundings. She still can’t see anything, but she can hear the sound of other peoples frantic breathing echoing of the stone walls of the cave. She freezes suddenly, feeling like a caged animal surrounded by predators.

“Who else is in here?”

“Jet, Smellerbee and Aang.”

“So we’re still waiting for-“

“No Katara,” Says Jet, stepping closer to her, his voice bitter, “I counted the cannon blasts. We’re not waiting for them.”

“Oh…”

Jet’s meaning is clear. The boy and girl from 5 are gone, so is Lee, the twelve year old from 6. Song, the girl from 8 with the soft voice and knowledge of healing plants must be gone too, and her partner Jian. Hama’s district partner Arnook. And Meiling.

Seven dead in barely ten minutes.

“Jet, please,” Says a small voice, “Can’t we wait a few more minutes? Meiling might still make it.”

Aang, ever the optimist, clearly had not seen his district partner die. Katara has not a single clue how to break it to him.

“No, Aang,” Says Jet, his voice gentle, “We need to think of the rest of the group. We need to get out of here before the dog-pack comes looking for us. Did anyone manage to get any supplies?”

Katara remembers with surprise the heavy backpack she took from the career tribute who didn’t kill her.

“I do,” She said.

“So do I” Says Hama, “It’s only a small backpack though.”

“Better than nothing,” Says Jet approvingly, “I found myself a pair of swords, and Smellerbee’s got another pack, we think it’s got food in it. Aang, you get anything?”

“No” murmured the younger boy, his voice trembling.

“Here is what we are going to do. I will go ahead and scout out a place for us to set up camp. Katara, you stay here and look after Smeller’s with Aang. Hama, you come with me.”

There wasn’t much to do but obey Jet.

Then comes two long, agonising hours of waiting. Katara barely says a word, Aang is equally reticent, and Smellerbee sleeps. All Katara wants is for night to come, when the faces of that day’s dead would be projected into the sky. She can barely stand not knowing if Sokka made it or not. You fight and argue bitterly with your sibling, but you never wish them dead. Ever.

Katara’s stomach grumbles, having become used to its capitol diet, were food was available at all hours of the day.

She cannot relax, how could she? Every tiny noise could present a threat. But an hour or so passes, and there is no sign of the career pack.

Aang breaks the echoing silence of their cave.

“She sang at the reaping as well.” He said, his voice still small and flat. Katara immediately knows who the younger boy is talking about. “They threatened her then, but they didn’t dare touch her, not while Yang Chen was around. She said that they couldn’t have Meiling looking bad for the chariot procession. But they knew what Yangchen was really thinking. She would have killed them if they’d hurt Meiling.”

Katara remembers Pakku stopping that Dai li agent from mutilating her completely on the boat. Apparently the only time the Capitol would refrain from inflicting pain was if the result would be aesthetically displeasing.

“What did she sing?” Is all Katara can think to ask.

“Some song she came up with, about President Kuei, I think… she was on my production line at the factory, and she used to make us laugh with these songs she just make up on the spot. About the factory manager, the peacekeepers, the Dai li… anyone. She loved to sing-”

His words are broken by a sob that just about broke Katara’s heart. She moved over to the young boy in the dark, and wrapped her arms around him, tears falling slowly down her own cheeks.

“‘Ringing chime’, that’s what her name means” Said Aang, pulling away from Katara, “And that’s what everyone said her voice sounded like.”

“I didn’t know names could have meaning like that. Its… its beautiful.” Says Katara, meaning it.

“Oh yes,” Says Aang, his voice brightening just a little,“All our names mean things. Mine means ‘peaceful rising’, and Yang Chen’s has something to do with the tranquillity of the ocean, even though we don’t have once of those back home in 12.”

Katara doesn’t associate the ocean with calmness or peace. In 11, ‘the ocean’ has connotations with shifts on freezing oil rigs, where the waves rise higher than even those great buildings of stone and marble in the Capitol. What a sweet fantasy world Aang must live in, to think so well of the sea.

“You know, I saw her, Meiling, I mean, airbend a few times, back in training,” Says Katara, tentatively, “She made it look so beautiful.”

“She really did, “ Saya Aang, and Katara can hear the smile in his voice, “She was one of the best airbenders I knew. And even though she relied on the Capitol as much as everyone else did, she was, I don’t know… more free, somehow, than the rest of us. Like she was the breeze itself, that’s what everyone used to say...”

The cave fills with nothing but the rush of the river over stone and the rippling echoes of dripping water. No more cannon blasts sound, but Katara is beginning to get jumpy. Surely two hours at least had passed by now? Where was Jet?

In the blackness of the cave, her mind begins to form terrible images. Jet, being crushed to death by a giant bolder, being torn to shreads by Pakku’s awful squirrel- mutts, being sliced up slowly by that terrifying knife girl, piece by bloody piece.  

Voices outside the cave almost make Katara jump out of her skin. She freezes, hardly daring to breath.

“They’re not here, it’s okay. We can get a drink now. How’s your leg?”

A slightly muffed groan, “Hurts, but I’ll be fine.”

Sokka. She’d recognise that voice anywhere. So the girl with him must be Suki. The Katara’s head slumps forward in relief, her heart thudding. She hears the sharp squeak of a rubber lid being twisted off a water bottle, and the soft glug as the voices filled it up from the base of the waterfall.

The sudden sound of a stick snapping a little way off in the distance causes the two to stop their drinking.

“Let’s go,” Says Sokka, his voice quiet and panicked.

Katara hears a slight rustle of leaves as her brother and Suki steal away from the waterfall. Jet and Hama couldn’t have chosen a better hiding place. Even Sokka, who was one of the most perceptive people Katara knew, hadn’t so much as guessed three people were hidden behind the endless rush of near-freezing water.

It turns out that the sound that scared the pair off was caused by Jet returning to collect Katara and the others.

He appears suddenly at the entrance to the cave, his clothes slightly muddied but otherwise unharmed. Katara lets out a sigh of relief.

“Come on,” Said Jet, “We’ve found a great spot about an hour’s walk from here, Hama’s waiting for us there.”

He walked over to Smellerbee, who has since woken up, and helped her too her feet, asking her if she was okay in low, concerned tones.

They scrambled out of the cave, and emerged, blinking into the vivid green light of the surrounding forest. Katara took a moment to take in her surroundings. Never before has she seen so many trees in one place. The forest smelled fresh and alive. Perhaps a little too alive.

Despite its beauty, something about being able to see past the trees makes Katara feel uneasy. She doesn’t like how easy it is to hide here.

Jet, however, seems completely at ease, and the four of them set off into the woods. There is no obvious path to follow, but Jet says that he knows exactly where they’re going.

“I’ve got a map of these woods set up in my mind already!” He told Katara, who thanked her lucky stars for the hundredth time that she had Jet as an ally.

They walked on for an hour, the cacophony of woodland sounds constantly giving them something to listen to. Katara is still twitchy, and the fact that they hadn’t seen or heard a single other tribute in well over an hour makes her suspicious. The creeping feeling of being watched just wouldn’t go away.

The huge range of hills they were going to hide in were insight, and Katara was desperate for night and sleep to come. Jet caught a few ginnea- frogs that looked safe enough to cook and eat and Smellerbee found a patch of wild lemongrass roots to chew.

After a while, a light rain began to fall, and the sound of raindrops hitting thousands upon thousands of living green leaves made Katara feel as though she were trapped in a giant tin pot.

The constant drumming of the rain and the sight of the endless sea of thrashing branches was slowly stripping Katara of her senses, confusing and overwhelming her.

It must have been affecting the others too, because the next thing Katara knew Jet was yelling at them to move and Aang and Smellerbee were running. Katara felt hot, stinking breath blowing at her back. She looked over her shoulder to see… what? A gigantic pair of grey nostrils were sniffing at snorting at her, but that was about all she could comprehend of this creature. It was huge, bigger than a fully-grown polar bear-dog, and a sick, decaying shade of grey. It’s hulking form was covered with thick hair and it’s milky-white eyes told Katara that it was completely blind.

But it is the pair of huge, yellow-white tusks that make Katara sicken with fear.

One of these tusks pushes into her back, sending her to her knees. Katara scrambles up from the dense covering of dead leaves, slips on a wet rock underfoot, then hauls herself back up again.

Mutt, barks her brain, run.

The blast of a cannon makes her flinch, but she does not stop to see who it is the beast has gotten. She cannot stop. Panic, raw and hot, has taken over, and she is at it’s mercy. All she can do is hurl herself after Jet as he leapt up rocks and small slopes before finally ducking behind a particularly large, lichen-speckled stone. The pounding of the creature’s hooves grows nearer and nearer. Katara flings herself after him, landing facedown in cool, damp mud.

She stays there for as long as she dares, knowing that raising her head will mean finding out who that horrific muttation’s victim was. She wants to sleep, to sink into the oasis of sticky brown surrounding her. But she can’t. Her allies need her.

She raises her head. She sees Hama, Jet and Aang. The beast is nowhere to be seen. And neither is Smellerbee.

Katara hauls herself to her feet, walking slowly over to where Hama and Aang are crouched, hidden from the outside world by a slab of stone. The rain is fading now, and the clouds part, revealing a weak ray of tentative sunlight.

Jet is white in the face, his hands which still clutch the twin swords her managed to get a hold off, shake slightly.

“Take these,” he said, hurling the dead ginnea-frogs at Hama, who only just caught them, “I’m… going off to get some more.”

Jet’s allies do not argue. They all, in the own ways, understand grief, and none begrudge Jet time on his own to deal with the death of his ally.

Night falls, inevitable and heavy.

Katara sits in the still damp mud, ears pricked for any sounds of danger. She is cold, though thankfully not wet.

They had been able to build a very meagre fire using wood Katara and Hama had spent at least an hour meticulously drying, and had managed to get a decent amount of meat off the ginnea-frogs. Plus Katara’s pack had contained a packet of dried dates, apple sauce, dry crackers, tinned monkfish liver and a canister of condensed milk. Hama had scoffed at the last two items, wondering aloud who decided what went into these meals.

Besides the odd assortment of pantry-items, the back pack had contained two huge tarpaulins, a bottle of liquid disinfectant, tweezers, an ice-pick, gloves that got hot when you pressed a button, two pairs of thick socks and a leather pouch for carrying water. Katara and Hama had smiled at each other when they saw that.

Jet hadn’t said much since he’d returned, and Katara had expected that. When Jet has said they needed one person at all times to keep watch, Katara had offered to take the first shift. Jet needed sleep more than she did just then.

Every now dead tribute whose face appears in the starless sky sends an icy dagger through Katara’s heart with more force and precision than the girl from 2 could ever achieve.

The list of the dead is almost exactly as she expected. The career from 3, the pair from 5 whose names she cannot remember anymore, the boys from 6 and 8, Smellerbee, Meiling. But no Song. Jet had miscounted after all.

Guilt rushes though Katara. They should have waited. Song was still out there somewhere, probably looking up at the faces of the dead just as Katara was doing, wondering where her allies were.

Katara sits, wrapped in her jacket, the heated gloves beginning to warm her body. She can just about see her allies, all covered by a layer of dead leaves and tarpaulin, for heat and disguise.

Katara wakes Hama at midnight to start her own shift. Katara slips into the spot the older girl has been sleeping in, which is warm from Hama’s body heat. She thinks briefly of dad and Gran Gran, wondering if they were watching her curl up, hoping that they could see that she was, for the moment, completely okay.

Katara quickly slips into the deep, dark sleep that only comes to those sleeping under the stars, and her first day in the 74th Annual Hunger Games draws to a close.

She sleeps so deeply that she does not hear the blast of a canon, nor the half-muffled sobs of a boy, crying alone in a forest that cannot care. Katara is ignorant of everything, and only morning light will break the spell.