Chapter Text
One of the only things he remembers from the day he won was the medic shining a flashlight in his eyes and asking if he knew where and who he was. He remembers Asenath, before she got her lips done the second time, crying and hugging Mags, who had been holding his hand from the second he was extracted. He remembers that was the first and only time Sligo ever said anything genuinely nice to him, smacked him on the back and said; ‘proud of you, kid’. The memories end with the blood under his fingernails that belonged to that girl from either 3, 6 or 9 who was the last one in the way. He doesn’t remember how he killed her, only that she was older than him and confident that she could take him out. She was wrong, he was faster. They collided a few times before she stopped moving and the cannon went off, and that’s where things start to blur together.
Ptolemy’s Satis-Factory operates discreetly out of the 18th and 19th floors of an office building downtown, listed on the directory as a naturopathic service. It’s the only surviving bordello in the Capitol, has lasted at least 50 years, between various locations, evading some perfunctory laws, sanctions that nobody actually cared enough to enforce. At this point, it is legally registered as a high-end massage parlor, securely out of the financial realm of anybody who has any incentive to investigate it.
Against his better judgment, he watches the reaping in 4 a few hours after checking in at Ptolemy’s and unpacking. It’s one of those reapings that is too bleak to get even the most detached, depraved or jaded spectators excited. The boy is just barely 12 from a dirt-poor family of eight and the girl is three months away from her 19th birthday, worked half to the bone already at an inland fish farm. He’s sweet and sanguine and maybe 80 pounds soaking wet and she’s a dead-eyed wage slave, pretty in a trashy sort of way with the kind of awkward lean muscle that collects on a slight build after a few years of hard labour. He’s so young and she was so close to being out of the woods. From a logistical standpoint, it really could go either way. He’s cute and crying a lot and she’s strong and well-endowed with a passable face. Something has to work out, if anything to make up for their fucked-up luck. Behind them, Mags is staring at the little one with knit brows and gritted teeth, Sligo is so visibly hungover he can almost smell him through the screen and Asenath looks like she wants to die as she waits suspiciously for a volunteer. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary, but even after everything is said and done, he keeps waiting for someone to raise their hand, to shove that tiny boy out of harm’s way. It never comes, and District 4’s 70th Reaping ends, the transition music plays, and the image switches to Priapus Fenstermaker in the crowded marina outside the Justice Building, shoving a Capitol News microphone in Sligo’s indignant, sunburned face.
“Well, there you have it, folks! Your District 4 Tributes for the 70th Annual Hunger Games and, wow, is this ever interesting! I’m here with the victor of Year 42, Sligo Altomar! So, Sligo, tell us a little bit about this year’s contenders!”
He’s always considered Sligo Altomar to be something of a cautionary tale. He was an absolute menace when he won 28 years ago; a wiry 17 year old killing machine with jet black hair and a face that was just pretty enough to keep him from coming across as completely terrifying. He still holds the record for most confirmed kills after he picked off 7 kids in 3 days and switches between blazing pride and crippling remorse where that fact is concerned, depending on how much alcohol is in his system. Over the years, he’s kept the scrawny build but added a beer gut, bad skin and a five o’clock shadow that always seems to stay the exact same length despite never appearing to have been touched. He spends a lot of time on the water, so his skin is sun-damaged and the tattoos on his arms have faded to a dull shade of indigo. He’s like a walking PSA to warn everyone he comes into contact with about the dangers of an addictive personality with his awkward physique and tar-stained teeth. But at this point, he’s technically family. Not so much a father figure, more like some kind of weird, grimy uncle.
Dull-eyed and sweaty, Sligo clears his throat and leans in, not even bothering to act enthusiastic. “Ciaran Whelk and Annie Cresta. 12 and 18, both from Portside.” Sligo lights a cigarette, Priapus laughs nervously and fans the smoke away from his face with his free hand. Sligo gives the camera a dead-eyed stare for a few seconds before leaving.
“Well, there you have it, folks, and now over to District 5, where we-”
He turns the TV off when he hears a knock at the door and Ptolemy’s grating voice.
“ Fiiinnick , are you decent?” Ptolemy doesn’t wait for an answer, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen in detail before, and when he opens the door he brings with him the smell of sweat, cigars and a thick, saccharine amberwood perfume. “I brought your schedule for the next week, doll. It’s so good to have you back so soon.” Ptolemy leans in and brushes his lips, silicone-swollen sausages covered in a sticky balm, against his temple. “You’re in for a busy one, Procula’s been blowing my line up and we both know Lady Livia doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“I’m ready when she is.”
“Good. She’s been singularly impatient since your last visit. It’s Reaping Week, you know how she gets.” Ptolemy gives him another slimy kiss on the forehead. “And, my word, aren’t you looking delicious, just in time for debutante season. My golden boy.”
Ptolemy Notch is one of the most nauseating people he’s ever had the misfortune of interacting with. He doesn’t know how long he’s been a pimp, never even considered how one would get into that line of work, but it’s made him obscenely wealthy and launched him into the upper echelon of Capitol society. He’s one of those people who never had a chance at being attractive, his body seems to be made of uncooked dough piled haphazardly onto a thick, awkward frame, covered in scaly rosacea and patches of coarse flaxen hair. He compensates because he has the means to, slicks his receding hairline with gel and hides the pallid heap of his body under expensive suits and tasteless statement jewelry. He’s never gotten the impression that Ptolemy is operating on any sexual urge, in fact, if he had to guess he would assume that Ptolemy has very little libido whatsoever but instead likes to play with people, control them, strip their ego bare and kick it around until he gets bored and moves onto the next one. Every time their paths cross he remembers the sensation of those meaty fingers around his throat, feeling suffocated by a wall of moist flesh, fantasizing about a metal shaft in his hands and the squelch of prongs piercing organs. Ptolemy is always the one to break in the new assets.
Early in his tenure, his partnership as Ptolemy liked to call it, he had been easy to sway, to manipulate, to use. He was 15 the first time his responsibilities switched from what he thought to be press engagements and platonic conversation and morphed into something else entirely. District kids are usually easy to obtain and even easier to keep, Victors are a better investment but can be a bit more of a challenge. In his experience, watching his peers filter in and out, they tend to be newly emboldened with nationwide acclaim and financial stability. He was the same, refused vehemently the second Ptolemy came to him with the offer. That same week, his mother was found floating in the harbour, plucked silently from the Victor’s Village, her neck snapped, a white rose stuffed in her mouth. President Snow paid for the funeral and had him driven out the following day, sat him down in a room with Ptolemy and asked him again in a slow, stern voice, reminding him of what followed recalcitrance, and by that weekend he had a permanent suite in the Satis-Factory, a hazy room with excessive drapery, lit by dim red strips of neon, approximated sleaze for people with last names like Cardew and Whimsiwick and Ravinstill to feel like they were indulging in something feral, tenebrous, dangerous, which he assumed at the time that maybe they were. It didn’t take long to figure out that, while illegal, nothing anyone did to him at Ptolemy’s carried the slightest shadow of risk. They all had enough money to make it, or him, disappear if needed. People back home remembered Leyla Odair, saw him at the train station every month. They said nothing.
He has been in the Capitol for six hours when Procula shows up, bringing with her the cloying scent of the morning’s bottle of wine and a litany of borderline-indecipherable grievances. He can’t say much for Procula Derringer, but at least she waited until he’d gone through puberty. She’s a lonely, boozy, spray-tanned mantis of a woman, complete with bug eyes and nervous, convulsive fingers that she keeps tipped with terrifying acrylic nails, perfect for raking young flesh. Her hair changes a lot, usually cycling back to a thinning blonde perm; long, tight ringlets defined with a thick, sappy gel which he assumes is intended to smell like lily-of-the-valley but with a distinct chemical acridity, urinelike when mixed with sex sweat and liquor. She’s an easy one; likes a slow, considerate fuck with lots of eye contact and small talk, and she tips generously. She has her regular rotation at Ptolemy’s, sometimes he’ll see her with Kale or Ren or Horemheb, but he is by far her favourite. She watches the Games obsessively, and she told him once that she has a thing for men from 4, that they have a ‘folksy inclination’, whatever the posca-drenched, botox-pumped fuck that means. When she said that, he wondered what she would do if she checked in one day and found Sligo, in all his sweaty, tattooed, drunk-uncle glory, waiting for her with a bottle of homebrew and a trauma-limp implement. Sometimes he looks at her and wonders where she went wrong in life, and sometimes it makes him feel vaguely sad. At the end of the day, all Procula really wants is intimacy, even if it’s not real, even if she’s shelling out a shameful amount of money to get pounded by barely-legal District kids while her contemporaries are doing all the things she resents them for. A recurring character is Andronica Dovecote. He has never met this woman, never seen her, never even heard of her outside of their two-hour long sessions, but she is the uncontested antagonist of Procula’s personal narrative.
“Babycaaaakes…” she wails, throwing the beaded curtain aside and collapsing on the bed, “-I’m finished.”
“What happened?” He feigns interest. He’s never been a good actor.
“It’s that-” she lights a cigarette and takes a long pull on it, sucking in her papery, powdered cheeks, “-that abominable Harrington woman. Look at this, look what that cockroach wrote about me-” she pulls a new issue of The Lararium out of her purse. The First Lady is on the cover, glaring beady-eyed out from behind her meticulously arranged powder blue fringe, undercut by a headline so ass-kissingly sycophantic it borders on lewd. Procula flips it open and holds it at arm’s length, “-‘but one artistic decline I can assume we all saw coming was that of Procula Derringer’- and, look-” she flips the page around, displaying the typo in question, Darynger . “-the illiterate wench, just wait until I get my hands on her. ‘-her uninspired Spring-Summer collection is indicative of the last gasps of a bygone era, and while one can appreciate the homage to the likes of Hadriana Ravinstill and Clytemnestra Moss, icons of their time’- and they were, they absolutely were and she wouldn’t know an icon if it bit her on that plastic nose of hers- ‘-as is usually the case with Procula’s self-indulgent appeals to nostalgia -’”
“If she’s so stupid-” he cuts her off, kissing her hand the way that always gets her to tip nicely. “-why do you care what she writes? She’s obviously wrong.”
“Oh, sweet-pea...” She gives him a drunk, wet kiss right between the eyes. “Oh, you lovely sweet simple thing, you just don’t understand.” She taps the tip of his nose with one of her horrifying nails and grins, lipstick smudged on her teeth.
“Why not? Tell me.” He runs a dutiful hand up her inner thigh, she grins.
“Because she- ahaaaa…” He hikes her dress up, she gives him a look that he knows she understands to be seductive but he finds repugnant. “-oh, you sneaky little- anyway, what you have to understand is that for whatever reason, Faustina Harrington- and you know something? I think her dunce of a husband- because of course she married a Whimsiwick, of course Anastatius went for the first fat cow to cross his path- but as I was saying-” Her tangent is fragmented and boring. He forces her legs apart with his knees, eliciting a loud bark of laughter. She gives him that Procula look again, those watery, bloodshot, heavily-mascaraed bedroom eyes. “Oh, you little lech, you.” She motions towards the nightstand with her foot, the decanter she brought with her sweating in the heat of the room. “-have as much as you want. You deserve it.”
Over the duration of his partnership , it’s become easier to categorize clients, to understand where he fits into whichever hole, physical or metaphorical, they need him to fill. He’s become intimately acquainted with the events that led up to Procula being the way that she is, and they don’t seem to be particularly out of place. She grew up rich, struggled to find love and supplemented it with a career that was doomed to fail. Sometimes, circumstances of their interactions aside, he feels bad for her. She may not be his favourite person but he’s met people who are multitudes worse and multitudes happier.
The First Lady shows up an hour after Procula, comes in without even bothering to knock, posca on her breath. Livia Snow has always made him feel vulnerable in the worst imaginable way, since the first time they met at the end of his victory tour. She’s not imposing necessarily, well into her 70s and always drowning in some heinous mess of tulle and velvet with small, lizardlike features, but there’s something about her that has always made him feel like he’s in imminent danger. She’s nearly exactly the same as she had been when she walked up to him to congratulate him on his win, saying she had been absolutely taken with him since the reaping, that he was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. There’s something about her that reminds him of overripe fruit, a saccharine putrescence that leaks out of her pores and makes him sick. When he’s inside her, he tells himself that whatever makes her that way is far out of his reach, but sometimes he isn’t convinced and when she leaves he turns the shower on as hot as it can go and stays there until he can feel his heartbeat looming behind his eyes and it gets hard to breathe.
“I don’t want any asinine small talk,” she announces as she enters. “You’ll fuck me and not open your mouth unless I specifically ask you to.” She tosses a bottle of cheap wine with a twist-top onto the bed as she begins to undress, arthritic fingers sliding belligerently through layers of silk. She pauses, turns back towards him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“What did I say?” He opens the wine, making sure to drink the neck of the bottle before she turns around. “You’re a man now, I guess it’s to be expected.” She positions herself awkwardly on top of him. “What, you’re a big man now and I’m some old lady? Is that what this is?” She takes the wine from him, throws back a good centimeter. “Well, is it?!”
“Liv, of course not.” He runs his hand up her thigh, she stares at it like it’s some kind of insect. “I’m only 19. How can you be old if I’m still so young?”
“You’ll be 20 soon,” she hisses, bracing herself against his throat with one hand and stroking him clumsily with the other. “If you’re 20, what does that make me?”
“I won’t be 20 until November. And 20 is young, 20 is very young.”
“I miss the way you were. Sweet boy, sweet stupid little provincial boy. Look at you now, you’ve let yourself go, you look like some disgusting old man.” She runs a hand down his chest. “Drink.”
He does as she says. The wine is bottom-shelf swill that smells vaguely of hairspray and he has to steel himself to keep from choking, he has an inkling that she had an Avox pick it up on her way in, unconcerned about taste or quality knowing it was mostly for him.
“I’m sorry, Liv. You’re right, I’ve let myself go. Sometimes when I don’t see you for a long time, I forget.” She scoffs, hooking her fingers under his collar.
“Everything you are, you owe to me.”
“I know. I’m just so… young and stupid that I forget sometimes. I haven’t lived long enough to understand why I owe you so much.”
She gives him a long, suspicious look. “You’re just saying what you think I want to hear.”
That’s my job . “I need you, Liv. I’m too young and stupid, I need you to take care of me.”
He drinks again, holds it in his mouth for a second like it’s too strong to swallow and looks up at her. Her face softens a bit, despite never having been soft to begin with.
“I blame your mother,” she complains. “Making you think you had it all figured out. She set you up to fail and abandoned you, who could abandon a child like that?” There is sweat collecting under the collar. Livia shakes her head. “God knows what would have happened to you if not for me. You’d be bent over a park bench on Tugurium Row, strung out on God knows what.” She bends down, gives him a wet, musty kiss on the lips. “I saved you.”
“You did, Your FirstLadyness.” That insipid nickname gets a dull, drunk smile out of her, it always has. He hadn’t known exactly how to address her when they first met after his Victory Tour, everyone watching had thought it was cute at the time and now even just saying it out loud makes him want to hurl. “I love you.”
She runs a hand through his hair, picks up the wine and holds it to his lips. “I love you too, my sweet boy. I am the only person who will ever love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
Her FirstLadyness loses stamina around the fifteen minute mark of her appointment, makes him lay next to her, curled up under her arm like a child, and holds the bottle to his lips as she loops through each individual Reaping, focusing intensely on 1, 2, 4 and 11. This year, 1 is offering a stunning 17 year old girl who reminds him of a smaller, more delicate Enobaria and a 18 year old boy with steely eyes and a body like a tank. 2’s Lanistarium seems to be running on fumes judging by their two somewhat underwhelming volunteers; a lanky 16 year old girl with severe bone structure and a ravenous look in her eyes and a boy of the same age who seems more suited to schoolyard violence than anything else. Liv doesn’t give much commentary on 4 beyond an off-handed comment that this Ciaran Whelk kid reminds her a bit of him, which makes him sick. 11 reaps a gorgeous 16 year old girl and a 13 year old boy with obvious microcephaly, and by the time the screen shows the grim look on their escort’s face, Liv has rewound to 1, right to the spot where Citrine Singer’s hand shoots up to volunteer, then through to Annie Cresta elbowing through the section of 18 year olds, glancing desperately back at a trio of thick-limbed Lanistarium-trained girls who avoid eye contact. As Asenath urges the crowd passive-aggressively for a volunteer to take Ciaran’s place, Liv skips to 11, to the wails of Mose Rowe’s 18 year old sister. Eventually, she resigns herself to checking in one districts she doesn’t care about; the tiny black-haired girl from 5 who looks like she’s smiling to keep from crying, the dejected pair of 15 year olds from 7 and the rangy labourer from 12 who introduced himself with an ear-splitting riff on a broken harmonica. By the time she’s zeroed in on the girl from 6, a pretty freckled kid who doesn’t look like she’s been outside in weeks, the appointment is over and he wouldn’t be able to walk in a straight line if he tried.
“You’re late,” Mags informs him when he’s sobered up enough to make it to the train station, yanking him down into a vice-grip of a hug. The platform is in direct sunlight and for a second he feels like he’s about to keel over, the acrid taste of hours-old wine churning in his esophagus.
“Sorry. Livia.” She gives him a somber, knowing look. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Mags shakes her head. “It’s okay, honey. Just-” she leans in again. “Take the girl, alright? Sligo’s on the books this year and we decided we’re gonna work together with Ciaran. He needs… surrogate parents, if you know what I mean.”
“I figured. That’s fine. She can’t be any worse than Leucie.”
“Exactly. She’s older, she’s smart, and, hey, maybe getting to spend the last week of her life with you might take the edge off it a bit.”
Mags elbows him and he forces a smile, glancing back over at this year’s batch of cannon fodder. The girl has her arm around the boy, who is a good foot shorter than her and starting to break down again, and Sligo is standing behind them with his hands in his pockets, eyeing a busty female Avox emptying a garbage can at the very end of the platform. Finally, Asenath disembarks the train in a knee-length red latex dress that squeaks when she moves.
“Oh, finally,” she announces when she sees him, stumbling a little as she steps onto the platform on eight-inch heels. “Priapus is pissed, kid, he didn’t know you were going to be out of town. He had to interview that .” She jerks her head towards Sligo, who has begun to excavate his nails with a fishhook.
There isn’t a single organic feature on Asenath Glass’s face besides, arguably, her teeth and eyes. Her nose was once aquiline, but has been chiseled down to a tiny, flat slope, her cheekbones have been pumped full of… something and her lips are grafted to Hell and back, so thick her speech comes out in a breathy, padded mumble. Her eyebrows are wispy, microneedled slashes and her forehead has been meticulously ironed into a shiny, immovable dome. Her hair grows in loose curls, but she massacres it with chemicals biweekly to flatten it into glossy submission, dyes it half red and half black and marinates in spray tan. He wouldn’t go as far as to call her ugly, because she certainly isn’t, but whatever kind of pretty she is does nothing for him. She has been the escort for 4 for twelve years now, after her predecessor was given an entry-level Gamemaker position. He has no idea how old she is and doesn’t care to find out, but assumes maybe late thirties to mid forties. She has to have passed a certain age judging by the bones and veins in the backs of her hands, but that could also potentially be attributed to her achingly low BMI. When he met her for the first time, she’d scared him a little. He hadn’t known how to navigate the specific blend of sycophancy and rhapsodic patriotism that was her personality then, before she’d gotten attached to one too many dead children and become caustic and jaded. The one thing he can say for her is that she’s reliable and not entirely unpleasant all the time. She can be judgmental, controlling and shrill, but there’s something genuine, something fundamentally good nestled under the layers upon layers of silicone.
“Sorry, I had to do some favours for a friend.”
Asenath gives him a look. “Who? Why now?”
“Some promo for Flickerman’s show, Gloss and Augustus and I got roped into it for basically nothing. Sorry. Stupid move on my part.”
She waves a hand. “Whatever.” She leans in. “You better do something to get these two pumped up. We got stuck at a tollbooth on the way here, they’ve been on that train for seven hours listening to Sligo flap his gums about his confirmed kills, I’m honestly shocked they didn’t jump on the tracks when they had the chance.”
Asenath leads him over to the tributes, who are still standing next to the train, staring at the ground. The girl is wearing the same slightly ratty yellow dress she wore for the reaping, with her thick, chocolate brown hair in two braids threaded and tied off with white lace ribbons. She’s a wholesome, plain kind of pretty with wide green eyes and clear skin, but her nails are chewed raw and it looks like she’s taken kitchen scissors to her bangs recently. She stares at him for a second and forces a smile, squeezing the boy’s shoulder. He’s wearing a pale turquoise pin-striped suit that’s just slightly too small, one of those year-in-year-out Reaping outfits that his parents won’t replace until they have to cut him out of it, his left hand clamped around something in the pocket of the jacket. He almost can’t bring himself to look at him for too long, this gap-toothed, freckled shrimp of a kid who seems built for nothing more than tide pools and sunburns.
“Annie. Nice to meet you.” She holds her hand out for him to shake, she has a firm grip, nothing less than he would expect from someone who spends her weeks hauling 90 pound troughs of dead fish from loading dock to assembly line. “And this is Ciaran.” Ciaran sniffles and extends his hand nervously, and fuck, he’s so tiny … Annie brings a hand up to stroke his short, strawberry blonde hair. “Ciaran works on his dad’s boat when he’s not in school. He caught a salmon the size of my leg last summer, his dad showed me pictures.”
“Yeah?” He leans over to meet Ciaran’s eyeline, cursing his seemingly innate inability to converse comfortably with children. “I used to work on a crab boat with my mom sometimes when I was your age.”
Ciaran nods and keeps his eyes locked on the ground, shuffling a small chip of cement with the toe of his shoe. He can feel Mags, Asenath and Annie all staring at him, waiting for him to say something, but he can’t seem to make it happen. Instead, he directs his gaze towards Sligo, who is once again lighting up, watching the female Avox’s uniformed ass as she departs back into the station.
Last year’s tributes were a fresh-faced pair of Careers named Levi and Shantie, both 18 and both from the Peninsula. They were promising until they weren’t. He’s figured out how these things usually go. Tributes from the Flats, himself included, are usually sloppily trained by a vicarious parent or older sibling. The Southernmost section of 4 is a barren, sparsely populated stretch of land comprised primarily of cliffs, scrubby fields and the titular saltpans that stretch miles out into the ocean. Once the Whimsiwick fish farms began to churn out shellfish, it was only downhill from there, as the Flats are where the majority of 4’s shellfish exports are obtained and processed. Families from the Flats tend to be dirt-poor and angry about it, and they’ll do just about anything to get their dignity back. After his win, this attitude was solidified tenfold, and since then, he’s had a Tribute from the Flats every year with the exception of 69 and now 70, they have all died outside of the Final Five.
Tributes from the Peninsula tend to get farther, their training is better and they come from slightly more money, so they’re usually less desperate to volunteer young. Levi, Shantie, Ridley from 66, Carrick from 67 and Keelyn from 68 were all over 16 and had been given at least some level of briefing on how to not die from exposure or infection, along with combat training, and grew up with the privilege of having the Lanistarium close by. He’s only been there once, right after he won, and he remembers being nauseous the entire time, half from the concussion, half from the hard-bodied 18 year olds staring him down with weapons in hand. He soon realized, after watching Ridley manage to accidentally shoot himself in the gut with an arrow on his third day in the arena, that they tend to be too confident for their own good. He feels bad for Mags, who grew up in the Peninsula back when it was still mostly seasonal fishing villages and still has family there, she knows how much stock they put in the Lanistarium and how misled the Careers tend to be.
This year, for the first time since 62, both Tributes are from Portside, a fishing hub right in the middle of the coastline that houses the main WP compound on the Easternmost edge of the city limits. The Victor’s Village is just outside of the main town center and he’s never fully gotten used to it. It’s a busy, self-important place clustered around a vast pier where everyone always seems to be in everyone else’s business. Mom fucking hated it there. He hates that he knows vague scraps of information about the Tributes just from having remembered where he’s seen them before. He knows Ciaran’s father is the captain of a trawler with a crew of eight men that’s always moored outside the licensing office, where his wife works part time while the kids are at school. He knows Annie works at both the inland WP compound and at the free-range outpost in Pliny’s Inlet because he’s seen her boarding both respective buses at various times. Sligo is from Portside and everyone knows him there. He can’t say much for Sligo, but at least he’s been generous with his winnings, generous enough to have successfully garnered a positive reputation in a place where even the tiniest slip-up can brand someone for life despite having been an intemperate dipsomaniac since his early 20s.
Once his own victory had settled on the District, once the parcels had dried up and the festivities had ended, he realized that so had any favour he’d garnered in that impertinent nest of busybodies. The class division in Portside is stark, with menial wealth scattered randomly among people who usually come into it by accident. A mayoral ascent here, a fish farm promotion there, a smattering of lucrative salmon seasons that never last long, and three living Hunger Games victors, three dead. Those with money are stingy and suspicious, those without, jealous and exhausted. It’s not immensely unlike the Flats, but the attitude that comes with poverty in Portside is different. It could be the population density, could be the proximity to the Justice Building and, by extension, the Capitol, or maybe it could just be coincidence, but there’s a sense of entitlement that has always put him off, a grasping, groveling atmosphere.
When he finds her in her apartment before Remake, Annie still has the yellow dress on, but her hair is down, crimped into jagged waves by the braids and the humidity, the ribbons sitting in a tangle in her lap. She flinches a bit when he enters, looks him up and down and forces a smile.
“Hi,” he opens.
Her eyebrows twitch together slightly. “Hi.”
“You mind if-” He glances towards the chair across from her.
“Sure.” She crosses her legs, looks him up and down again with a slightly wider approximation of a smile.
“So, I guess, I’ll just get into it, uh… I’m really sorry about this.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” she lies.
“A lot of the time, when people over 16 get Reaped, nobody volunteers because they think-”
“It’s really fine.” Her smile goes from a grimace to a smirk. “Come on, man, lighten up. You know you’re breathing through your mouth, right?”
He clenches his teeth, suddenly overcome with nasal congestion. “Sorry.”
Annie shrugs. “All good.”
“So, just before we get into anything else, I have to fill out these intake forms, then you’ll go down to Remake with Asenath and Ciaran.”
“Oh, so you’re my mentor, then?”
“Yeah, Mags thought it was better if she helps Sligo with Ciaran, just because he’s so young. So, that reflects well on you, if Mags thinks you’ll be fine with just me-.”
“Why, do you suck as a mentor or something?”
Stop looking at me like that . “Well, I-, uh, the thing is that I’m just-”
“Through the nose.”
“Sorry.”
“So, the forms?”
He fumbles the stack of papers as he lays them across the coffee table, Annie eyes them hesitantly.
“So basically, I just need to get all your basic information. Any, like, medical information will be later on, I just need things like full name, family information, address, you know.” In the pocket of his jacket, he finds a half-dead pen. “Okay, full name, Annie Cresta-”
“Ančice.”
“How do you spell that?”
She rolls her eyes. “Just give it-, there’s a…” She leans across the table, writes A N Č I C E on the first line.
“That’s a nice name.”
“Thank you.”
“Address?”
“Harrington Place in Portside, Unit 430. Just me there, I know you’re about to ask me about my marital status. Why do they have that anyway? I mean, I guess some people get married young.”
“The first Tribute I mentored was married.”
“Shit, really?”
“Yeah.” Leucie was from the Flats, plain-faced and muscular, married at 16 to a 26 year old clam diver who convinced her she’d be able to win. She died in the Final 5 of dehydration. “Anyway, tell me about your family. You have any siblings?” She shakes her head. “Okay, no siblings… what about your parents?”
Annie’s lips thin. “Dead. For about five years now.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” She crosses her legs, knits her fingers together in her lap. “It was an accident. They were lobster trappers. My, uh… my dad… he really liked to build things, so at one point he got it in his head that he could build a boat.” Annie clenches her jaw. “He was very good at catching lobsters.”
“But not at building boats?” She shakes her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that up. Shit, open mouth, insert foot.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“If it’s any consolation, my mom died four years ago, too, and I never met my dad. It was really hard. So I understand.”
Annie shrugs. “Yeah, it… yeah. Anyway, next question?”
“Employer.”
“Whimsiwick Pisciculture. I haven’t been placed yet, but I’m interning in Free Range, Processing and Shellfish.”
“So you’re well-versed in fish?”
She laughs nervously. “Yeah, right. I’m honestly shocked I haven’t managed to burn the place to the ground. Saira’s been doing me a lot of favours.”
“Who’s Saira?”
“My mom’s best friend, and my boss, I guess. Basically when the boat went down, she was the closest thing I had to family, so I’ve been taking care of myself this whole time, but Saira helped me kind of… figure out how to be an adult, I guess.”
In the slot for family information, he writes ‘close with unrelated family friend’. Annie twists her ring around her finger, a gold band with a decently sized emerald.
“Is that your token?”
“My great-grandma’s engagement ring.” She holds up her hand, smirks and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Stolen. Don’t write that down.”
He puts a finger to his lips in concurrence and places the forms aside. “So… how are you feeling?”
Annie bites her lip. “I was scared before. Now I don’t really know if I feel anything. I’m mostly worried about Ciaran, just because he’s so young. He’s so small.” She leans in. “I really thought somebody was going to volunteer. I knew nobody would for me, but he’s a Whelk , everyone loves his family. It’s kind of morbid, honestly.”
“Why didn’t you think anyone would volunteer for you?”
Annie’s expression is hard to place. “I’m guessing you don’t talk to a lot of people in Portside.”
“Not if I can help it.”
She laughs. “It’s not that people don’t like me. I mean, I don’t think it is, anyway. It’s just that it’s probably better if I’m not around anymore.”
“Don’t say that, I don’t think anybody thinks that.”
She tilts her head and goes back to fidgeting with the ring. “Well, you don’t talk to people in Portside.” She pauses. “Anyway. Is there anything else?”
“No, we’re done. The rest will be done with your prep team. So, Asenath will take you down there now with Ciaran.”
“Okay.” She stands up and crosses the room. “Well, thank you for… the intake…ing? The taking in? I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah.” His mouth feels dry. “Good luck.”
Annie turns back, halfway through turning the doorknob, her voice is barely a half a whisper. “Thank you.”
When he gets back to the common area, Mags is plucking a newly-lit cigarette out of Sligo’s hand and extinguishing it in the bar sink. She looks up at him and smiles that warm grandma smile that always takes the edge off this annual shitshow.
“Intake went well?”
“Perfect. Thanks for letting me take her. You’re right, it’s easier with someone who can kind of hold their own.”
“I figured it would be. We didn’t even get to Ciaran’s forms, poor thing was so worked up. I’ve been doing this a long time, kid, it’s never been as bad as just now.”
He turns to Sligo. “You better be nice to that kid.”
Sligo glares at him. “Actually, I was planning on drop-kicking him off the roof to build character. He’ll shoot back up, it’ll be fine- of course, I’m being nice to him, you limp-dicked-”
“ HEY !” Mags cuts him off, “the two of you will not antagonize each other this week.” Sligo rolls his eyes, Mags takes her sandal off and smacks him on the arm with it. “I mean it! This could be the last week of these kids’ lives, they don’t need to spend it listening to two grown men sniping at each other like 5 year olds.” She stares between the two of them. “Alright. So, Finnick, tell us about Annie.”
He sits on the couch opposite Sligo, who eyes him with lazy disdain. “Honestly, with her, it could go either way. Her age is a definite advantage, she’s big enough to be strong but small enough to be fast. The one thing is, she… doesn’t seem very motivated. I got the impression that she’s scared, maybe trying to… come off like she’s not.”
“She looks promising,” Mags replies, “she’s not a Career, per se, but WP, that’s hard work. She’s obviously in good shape and she’s definitely not scared of blood.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Maybe we can prioritize teaching her how to fight and how to sell herself, she seems smart enough to handle the survival piece on her own.”
“I can't believe nobody volunteered for that baby,” Asenath shudders as she re-enters the common area, making for the bar like her life depends on it. She snatches up a decanter and sloshes a generous amount into a glass. “It really just makes me sick.”
“How were they when you sent them down?” Mags inquires.
“Annie’s great. Good sport. Feronia, on the other hand, practically had to pry Ciaran off me.” Asenath sits down heavily on the couch next to him, her eucalyptus perfume hits him in the face like a brick and he stifles a cough. She rattles the ice in her drink. “I’m gonna need, like, six of these.”
“I’m glad he’s with Feronia," he adds, “she was mine, she’s good with the young ones.”
“Yeah, Ceto down at the Embassy thought so too, I think she made some calls.”
“Did you happen to see who Annie’s stylist is? I remember Quinticilia dressed Shantie last year, she was really good.”
“Ugh, no such luck, kid.” Asenath gives him an amiable punch in the shoulder. “It’s a good thing she’s already pretty, she’s Procula’s this year.”
His mouth suddenly fills with the taste of stale posca and cigarettes. He’s known for a while that Procula has dressed Tributes in the past, but judging by her constant complaints about being supposedly underappreciated, he always assumed she hadn’t been asked back in years. There’s nothing in the arena that can possibly be worse than getting picked at by those centipede fingers, he hopes desperately that Annie has a strong stomach and a high tolerance for being manhandled.
“Asenath, that woman is a nightmare. Is it… too late to switch?”
“Let’s not worry about this right now," Mags placates. “This Procula broad can’t be that bad.”
“You’d be surprised,” he interrupts.
Asenath laughs. “I’ll drink to that.”
Before he goes downstairs, he fills an empty water bottle with something clear and pungent from the sideboard that he’s seen Sligo getting into before. He can feel Liv’s wine beginning to leave his system, leaving a nauseating taste in his mouth and a weird ache in his stomach, and he doesn’t particularly relish the idea of slogging through the remainder of the night sober. He has just enough time to check in with Annie and Procula before hauling ass back to Ptolemy’s for an hour session with Apophis Pomander, a broadcasting magnate with erectile dysfunction and a penchant for bondage. It feels like too much effort for an hour, but Apophis tips munificently, and he figures it can’t hurt to plant the idea of sponsoring Annie in the head of a desperately horny, terminally single man with more money than he knows what to do with.
He hates Remake, dreads going down there every year but now dreads it even more knowing that not only is this poor girl having to endure Procula on top of being marked for death, but he’s essentially going to be abandoning her for the rest of the night. Even if these appointments do end up benefiting her down the line, which he prays they will, he thinks about his own Games, how pissed and confused he would have been if it had been Mags leaving him to fend for himself on the first night.
The door of the dressing room marked 4F is ajar but the curtain a few feet behind the door is drawn. Camarina Krieg, an entry-level aesthetician who he’s only ever met in passing, is assembling a few odds and ends in the hallway, her bag open on the floor. When she takes notice of him, she straightens up and smiles.
“I’ll send Procula back down. She’s really outdone herself this year.”
She shuffles past him, reeking of hairspray. He hears fabric rustling behind the curtain, and a pregnant pause before Annie addresses him.
“Finnick? Are you even allowed back here?”
“That depends, do you have clothes on?”
She pauses again, laughs nervously. “Define clothes.”
“The door was open, so…” Annie sighs loudly. “Anyway, I just wanted to stop by to tell you that I won’t be able to watch the parade but the reason why I can’t is because I have to go meet with someone who’s interested in sponsoring you.”
His obvious lie seems to convince her. “Really? Are you sure? Isn’t it way too early?”
“I mean, yes, but I’m kind of a big deal around here.”
She laughs. “And so modest.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to come and say good luck, the parade is pretty much impossible to screw up, so just act like you’re happy to be there, smile, wave, you know the drill.” Behind the curtain, Annie sighs again, followed by a faint rattling noise. “Alright, what’s the damage, let’s see.”
“I’m just warning you, it’s bad.”
“I guarantee I’ve seen worse.”
A pair of heels clicks heavily towards the door and the curtain flies open to reveal Annie standing there with a look on her face that he can only describe as homicidal. He isn’t sure what he expected from someone as tacky as Procula. Annie has what appear to be two padded clamshells cupping her breasts, forcing them together. There’s a fringe of tiny metallic shells hanging from the top to around where her ribs end. The low-waisted, floor-length skirt has a slit up each leg and the material is a shiny tulle with a vexatious texture. Her hair is curled and sprayed and sculpted and rock-hard, pinned here and there with pearls and tiny shells. Her makeup is… a lot, almost exactly what Procula normally does to her own face but in shades of blue and green, and she has a scorching orange spray tan.
“Wow. You-... that’s, uhh…you… look…”
“Horrifying,” she spits.
“I know it’s a bit much, but it’s the parade, people have to be able to see you from far away.”
“They’ll be able to see these-” she grabs her chest, rattling the metallic fringe, “-from space.” She pauses, smirks. “You’re mouth-breathing again.”
He grits his teeth. “A lot of people find Procula’s work to be…” He gestures vaguely, trying to think of one positive thing he’s heard about Procula in the time he’s known her. Garish? Derivative? Bad? “They like it. They wouldn’t hire her for the Games if they didn’t. She’s really popular.” 15 years ago . “You know, you kind of look like… Hadriana Ravinstill.”
Annie knits her laminated eyebrows. “Who the hell is Hadriana Ravinstill?”
“I don’t know.” Annie rolls her eyes, “I’m pretty sure that’s what Procula was going for. Whatever. You look nice. I think you look nice.”
Annie inspects her chest and arms. “She painted me orange.”
“It’s just a spray tan. We get them every year, at least us from 4. Beach theme, you know.”
“Is that what this is?” She points to his arm, her face splits into a mocking grin. “You know, I was wondering why your hands are so pale compared to everything else…” she pauses, licks her thumb and goes to swipe it across his forehead. He intercepts her hand about an inch away and she laughs.
“Don’t do that. Just… go with it? Please? You know I don’t have any control over this.” That isn’t entirely true, he could fuck some sense into Procula but the idea alone makes him itch.
Annie picks at a thorny corkscrew of hair at her temple. "My tits hurt.”
He takes the repurposed water bottle out of his pocket. “Here. For confidence. You’re old enough. Don’t tell anyone.” He hands it over, she sniffs it and cringes.
“I think Procula put that on my nails earlier.” She takes a hesitant sip, gags, and swallows, grimacing.
“Better?” She shrugs, causing the fringe to rattle again.
“Oh, there she is!” A shriek and the sound of stilettos on marble ricochets around the hallway. Procula is on Annie before he can process her arrival. “Isn’t she a vision?” She takes Annie’s painted face in her insect fingers, Annie stares at him with a grin on her mouth and murder in her eyes. “Hadriana reincarnated… And if you think she looks good now, just wait until the interview.” Procula gives him a raunchy look which reads more feral. “You won’t be able to control yourself.”
“Can’t wait,” Annie deadpans. Procula kisses Annie loudly and wetly on both cheeks before turning to him and leaning in.
“I’ve got something like that of my own,” she informs him in a nauseating, posca-scented purr, “I’ll show you tonight.”
As she clacks away, vibrating with self-satisfaction, Sligo turns the corner, bringing with him a boozy miasma. He stops in front of them, looks Annie up and down, his gaze settling squarely just below her collarbones. He makes eye contact with her and nods with a tight-lipped smile.
“Can I help you, Sligo?”
“Just enjoying the view.” He turns and heads in the direction of Ciaran’s green room. Annie watches him leave.
“If I win, am I allowed to punch him, just once?”
I’ll have to look into that for both of us .
Apophis keeps the TV on as background noise as they take turns tying each other up. It’s weird viewing for a hired dick appointment, kids being hauled to the killing floor in hideous get-ups, but he puts up with it, aware of his commitment to both institutions. When the camera zeroes in on the 4th chariot, he notices Annie’s arm locked around Ciaran’s waist to keep his tiny body from flying off. Knowing they have the same stylist, it’s obvious Ciaran’s outfit is a shameless rip-off of his own, if not simply recycled and reduced slightly in size, the scale-patterned loincloth and vest, the clunky rope necklace with an oversized gold fish hook, the slicked back hair and spray tan. They’re leaning into the young tribute thing again, and it doesn’t help that their eyes and hair are similar in colour, although Ciaran is two years younger than he’d been and already smaller than most 12 year olds. He suddenly can’t bear to look at Ciaran, directing his attention instead to 6, a pair of sexed-up train conductors, then on to 10, whose stylists have opted to cover their bodies strategically with raw beef, still dripping blood and spattering back on the pair from 11, who are wearing essentially the same thing comprised of various vegetables. 12 follows, decked out in vests and headlamps, and Apophis goes limp again with an exasperated sigh.
“Maybe if we switch," he offers, gunning for a good tip. Apophis obliges. Sliding his hands out of the weak knot binding them to the bedframe, he gets to work on his client’s ankles.
“Which one’s yours again?”
“Annie from 4, the tall one in the blue outfit, brown hair.”
“Ahh…” Apophis watches the screen. “Shell Tits?”
Classy. “Yes. Shell Tits.”
Apophis nods, eyes on the screen, apparatus disengaged. “Yeah, she looks decent. From what I gather, 1 is looking good this year, 2 not so much. 8 and 12 aren’t looking so bad, and your girl seems like she might have an edge.”
“I’m cautiously optimistic.” He stands over Apophis, whose ankles are now fully immobilized and moves onto his hands and arms, lowering him into a prone position on the mattress with his knees, remembering how quickly degradation can bring these sessions to a satisfactory end. “Now shut your greasy mouth so I can tie you up, you pathetic sack of jizz.”
Apophis stares hungrily up at him. “How disgusting am I?”
“Repugnant.”
Apophis makes a face. “That’s… that’s a little verbose, if I’m being honest.”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot, that’s why.”
“Okay, better. What are you going to do to me?”
Get you hard as fast as I possibly can so I can be done with this absolute farce. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do with this worthless thing.”
“I need to be punished.”
He leans back. “You’re not worth the punishment.”
“Oh pleeease sir…” Apophis smirks, his hands fully immobilized at his sides.
“Ugh, fine. I guess since you’re groveling like that, I have to. But I’m not going to enjoy it.”
Over the two years they’ve known each other, Apophis has always been very easy money.
He’s choking back a mixture of lemon water and activated charcoal over the sink, trying to purge his bloodstream of alcohol and his mouth of Apophis when Ptolemy shows up around 11:45 with Bijou Shackelford a few paces behind him, small and pale and terrified. He would have recognized her anywhere; that bloodthirsty little demon-eyed Career who cut down everything with a pulse in her path last year and had the whole thing in the bag from the second she stepped off her platform, Flickerman used to call her The Tiny Terror and he was almost afraid to let Levi ally with her, which proved justified after she turned on him in the Final Five. He remembers her Victory Tour, remembers interviewing her when she stopped in 4 and feeling sick when they finally met in person and he saw just how small she was, how pretty, when he realized that every ounce of violence in her had already been spent and that now she was just an exhausted kid who had no idea what was coming.
She has a whole family back in 1 , he remembers as she stands in the doorway, staring at him like she’s afraid he’s about to attack her, two parents, a grandma, two little sisters …
Now her waist-length golden-brown hair is greasy and she’s trying and failing to cover herself with her hands. Since her win, she’s turned 17, and for a second he thinks that must be some kind of silver lining before remembering that he was Ptolemy’s youngest victor and ninth-youngest overall. He’s got her in lavender lace that leaves exactly nothing to the imagination and the familiar heavy gold collar. She doesn’t look like she’s had a minute of sleep all week.
“Isn’t she just precious?” Ptolemy smarms, running thick fingers through Bijou’s hair and down her back. “And those feet , I’ll have a line around the block by tomorrow.”
I hope your next asset has teeth between her legs. “She certainly is something.”
Bijou gives him a long, sad look like she’s waiting for him to do something, to kill Ptolemy and grab her and jump out the window. She crosses her feet like she’s trying to hide them and he makes a point to stare Ptolemy right in the eyes.
“I like the look of your girl this year. She’s a little old if she were to start next year and I can tell she’s a drinker, which you know I hate, but I’ll make an exception for those knockers any day.” He laughs, lips skinning back from stained veneers that need replacing soon. “Me, I’m rooting for 1, that Citrine’s a little vixen. May the odds, eh?” Ptolemy claps him on the shoulder. “Alright. Back to work. They aren’t gonna suck themselves!”
He guides Bijou back into the hall. She looks back desperately as they turn the corner, begging silently for him to get her out.