Chapter Text
Dave
Your name is Dave Strider, you’re from District Two, and you’re the winner of the 72nd Hunger Games. That was one year ago, and already you are going to serve as a mentor. Not because there aren’t plenty of candidates to go around, Two is a career district after all, but because you insisted on it. You don’t care about the years to come, you don’t care about anything else; all you know is that this year, it has to be you. Because this year, there’s nothing you can do to stop your twin brother from volunteering as a tribute.
Fuck knows you’ve tried. You’ve reasoned, argued, bargained, threatened and pleaded, and the end result is still the same. Dirk isn’t listening, and if you’re to be honest with yourself, you’re not sure that you would’ve been any more receptive before your own games. You can still feel the wind of the building thunderstorm on Reaping Day, one year ago, as you gazed up at the Justice Building with your hair whipping around your face. “Alright,” you said, careful to maintain your level tone even though excitement and nerves made you feel like a bunch of electrical wires coiled together into the crude form of a human. “Let’s flip for it. You or me. Let’s do this man.”
“Let’s make it happen,” Dirk agreed, and the coin left your thumb and spun through the air, catching the gleam of the sun as it briefly broke through the blanket of clouds above. Him or you, you or him. Who was going first into the arena? The only way it would be fair was to let destiny decide it for you – you were both exactly as good, exactly as strong, exactly as ready.
Which is to say, you weren’t ready at all.
You swallow hard, fighting against the taste of bile at the back of your mouth, fighting even harder against the clinging shadows at the back of your mind. It had seemed so achievable when you stepped forward, nodded at the escort and said, “Yeah, it’s me. I’m the one doing the tribute thing. I volunteer. Let’s get this show on the road.” Like it was really just that easy. As if the whole thing was actually just a show, just a funny little pantomime played out each year. Of course you’d thought that you were taking it seriously, that what you really wanted was the battle to the death, the real shit. Well, not exactly wanted; it was just what you were born to do, right? Your Bro had already drilled it into your head that want didn’t enter into it.
You weren’t just gonna go in there and win, you were also going to make sure that some other, weaker person didn’t have to go in there instead of you, getting themselves killed. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? That was why both you and Dirk had to go in there even though you were twins and would both turn eighteen the same year. Because you were stronger than anyone else, and even if you’re from District Two there’s always a chance that you might die.
There’s always a chance. You feel sick, watching as the escort fishes around in the bowl after a name, as if that matters at all. Almost everyone is already looking at Dirk. A couple are also stealing furtive glances at the girl who just volunteered to go in as the female tribute, but most avoid looking at her at all. They know she doesn’t matter, that she’s not going to be the victor. By the ashy hue of her skin and her frail smile, she knows it too. Someone has to do it, there has to be two tributes, but this year just as last year, a Strider will wear a crown at the end of the game. That’s what everyone is thinking.
Last year, the two of you had offered to fight anyone who thought they were better than you for the chance to go into the arena. Knowing who your Bro is, not that many had been eager to take you up on it.
Your Bro stands next to you on the platform, because of course he does. He’s a previous victor, after all. He’s the one person in all of Panem who has been a victor twice. He went in the first time at fifteen, and then volunteered again the next year. At the time there was no actual rule to prevent him from doing that, so it was allowed. After he won again, even faster and more ruthlessly than the time before, there suddenly was a rule, probably because the good people of the Capitol felt like the game had been too predictable and too short. Or maybe even those bloodthirsty fucks had found their limit for what they could stomach; maybe your Bro’s efficiency made them realize for just a moment that this wasn’t any kind of game. It was a slaughter.
Who knows?
Your Bro moves a tiny fraction, letting you know he’s looking at you. The bright sunlight above sets his hair alight, the same white-blond hair in lazy curls as yours, makes it look like a really untidy halo. Like some sort of twisted angel. That’s a tough image to shake, because you know that’s probably how he sees it, in a way. Why not go back in the game, if he’s already proved that he can do it, if that means another year when someone else is spared? Why not kill his opponents as quick as possible, save them from suffering, make sure the whole twisted spectacle is over before anyone can starve to death or die of their wounds? Fuck, the only reason anyone survived the first day of your Bro’s second Hunger Games was that some of the kids were smart enough to leg it for the fucking treeline the moment the cannon went off. Everyone who went for the Cornucopia was dead within minutes.
If you think of it like that, it almost makes sense. It almost seems like the merciful thing to do. Except then you remember that those were kids, those were real people being put down one after another like rats in a barrel. Then you remember that one girl managed to keep running for two whole days, running until she dropped, and that’s when your Bro caught up with her. You remember the camera zooming in on her face, the fear and exhaustion in her eyes, and his complete lack of expression when he knelt down and slit her throat. And it doesn’t matter if the whole thing was kind of this big FUCK YOU to the Capitol because they didn’t get weeks of their drawn-out blood sport that year, all they got was a lot of kids killed quickly and efficiently during the span of two days; without drama, without excitement, without so much as a word. It doesn’t matter because your Bro still killed every single one of twenty-three tributes in his second Games, and there are no reasons, no statements, that can make something like that okay.
Fuck. Fuck. You need to calm down or you’re going to throw up. Dirk is stepping forward, his mouth is moving, but you can’t hear him. You’ve got to keep it together for his sake, no matter what. It’s for real now. Everyone is so sure he’s going to win, and you know that logically that’s the most likely outcome, but he’s your brother. You remember him as a child, when he would abandon his sword drills to run and pet one of the working horses dragging spoil from the quarry. You remember his completely quiet tears at the dead of night when his favorite horse was sent to the knackers after it broke its leg, when you lay awake and quietly stroked his forehead, neither of you saying anything in case Bro woke up. You remember chasing each other up and down the mountain slopes, playing obscure and dumb games that no one else could follow, making jokes and actually laughing when no one saw you. You remember the day the crow died, how he held you as you sobbed inconsolably against his chest. How he glared at Bro and whispered, ‘One day I’ll kill him’, and you both knew that he wouldn’t, but it still meant something that he said it.
You remember, and even though Dirk was always the harder of the two of you, the stronger, the one who knew how to be ruthless, you know you have to do this. You have been in the Games and he hasn’t, so there’s no way for him to possibly know what he’s volunteering to do. He’s your only family – at least the only family that counts – and he’s your only friend. There’s always a chance of dying in the arena, no matter how good you are, and you can’t allow that to happen. No matter what you have to do, Dirk is coming out of there alive.
You’d been so disoriented and weak when the hovercraft lifted you out of the arena, at first it hadn’t even registered that it was all over, that you had won. When people grabbed your arms you gritted your teeth and fought, squirming and kicking. They were only vague figures towering over you, your vision seriously impaired after that acid trap sprayed its payload right in your face. Your last fight had been a desperate, half-blind struggle, where you were forced to rely on your hearing and your reflexes, and some sixth sense you couldn’t even properly name. You’d thought you heard the other boy gasp and collapse, but now there were these hands holding you down, these bright lights shining in your face, and maybe this was it. Maybe this was how you died.
“Mr Srider, we’re just trying- It’s pointless. He’s panicking. Knock him out.”
A needle slid into your arm, something burned inside and stretched your skin, and then darkness followed.
When you woke up, you could see again. Actually, your vision was better than it had ever been before; you’d always suspected that you might’ve needed glasses, and this only confirmed it. Everything was so sharp. As you got off the hospital bed and made your halting, rubber-legged way over to the wash basin and mirror, you tried to remember what had happened, but it was as if the whole thing had momentarily scabbed over. For a few blessed, disoriented seconds you hadn’t remembered a single fucking thing. You’d been free.
Then you looked in the mirror. The hideous scars you’d been expecting – why? – weren’t there; your skin was smooth and unmarked. You looked hale and healthy. But your eyes… you’d expected your own amber irises looking back at you, the same colour as Dirk’s, as Bro’s. But instead a pair of unnatural-looking red eyes squinted back in shock and disbelief, the color of fresh blood out of a wound.
Then you remembered.
After vomiting up the nothing in your stomach, gagging horribly over a few mouthfuls of bile as you leaned on the sink and tried not to fall over, you stumbled back to your hospital bed. Next to it, on the nightstand, was a pair of shades. They looked just like yours, the ones you’d taken into the arena as a token, but it couldn’t possibly be the real ones. They were the only reason, probably, why that acid trap hadn’t completely taken your whole eyes all in one go, and surely it must’ve damaged them at least a bit. But maybe they’d fixed your shades just like they’d fixed your face and your eyes. Maybe there was nothing physical that the Games could break that the Capitol couldn’t put back together again. That thought seemed like a joke when you felt like there was a gaping chasm right behind your eyes, and you knew that there was no tech master or surgeon in the world who could fill it. Knowing the Capitol, they wouldn’t even try. The important thing, you suspected, was that you looked fine again.
You fumbled with the shades, wanting to put them on again, but your fingers appeared to want exactly none of it.
A door you hadn't been able to see suddenly slid open silently, and a person with blonde head fuzz shaved so close it showed the bright pink tattoos on their light brown scalp came walking in, stopping in surprise when they saw you awake. They were wearing a lab coat and the little plaque they wore read “Dr. Lalonde”. You couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man at first, and later found out that they considered themselves to be neither, which honestly didn’t seem all that strange compared to all the all the genuinely weird shit people in the Capitol got up to. Seemed practical, really, deciding not to bother with all that nonsense. Anyway, arguing with people about shit that concerned them and literally no one else seemed to you to be a.) pointless and b.) rude.
“Look at you, already on your feet and everything. That’s a victor for you. I’m Doctor Lalonde.” They reached out a hand, and you noticed that they had a little cat face painted onto each of their pale pink nails. “I’ve been in charge of reconstructing your face and eyes, as well as overseeing putting the rest of you together. You’d gotten yourself pretty banged up.” They winked, and their eyes were pink too. You lifted your hand to your own face, remembering the bright red irises.
“Okay, right, thanks for all that, but is it possible I got the one cosmetic doctor in all the Capitol who happens to be color blind? ‘Cause I’ve gotta tell you, that sounds like one hell of a drawback in your field. Not to tell you how to do your job or anything, but… yeah. Seems like a bit of an oversight, if you pardon my insensitive language.”
They blinked, at first confused, and then let out a small giggle. “Oh, man, right. Your eyes. Sorry, that must’ve been hella weird to wake up to. I was totes going to, like, break it to you gently and everything! I’d made up this whole speech, you just have to believe that it would’ve been real sweet and suuuuuper sensitive. Promise.” They sat down unasked next to you on the bed, crossing their legs as if they were the teenager and not you. You were uncomfortable, because it finally sank in that you were naked. They didn't seem to notice. “Anyways, basically what happened was, you came in here and needed your eyes fixed, like, stat. Sulfuric acid is some nasty stuff, yanno? Only I needed some implants to fix them because they were way ruined, and wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t have any in your super pretty eye color. Major oversight. I’m standing there feeling like an idiot, and we gotta go go go, your eyes aren’t gonna save themselves, so I just… pick one! I went with red since that was the closest I could get, and I figured with eyes like that you’d def feel kind of let down if I just put some boring brown or blue eyes in you. So yeah. I’m really super mega extra sorry about it, and if you want I’ll see what I can do about getting you some amber replacements, but uh… I gotta be real, as a doctor I wouldn’t recommend it. We’ve fixed everything up nice, but there’s still some damage there that we couldn’t just magic away no matter what we did, and any other major surgery on your eyes could still fuck your vision up. So… that’s up to you, kid.”
You felt anger bubbling up, wanting so desperately to have some kind of target, something to fight to make you feel less helpless. Your hands were shaking, shaping themselves around a sword that wasn’t there, and you remembered how all that blood had made the hilt stick to your skin as if you were never going to be able to let go. You’d hid in the shadows of the broken buildings around you, trying to control your breathing, and deep down you’d been sure that you were never getting out of there.
Looking over at Dr Lalonde’s concerned face, gazing at you from what suddenly seems like an impossible distance, you knew that you were right. You were never getting out. The anger ran out of you all in on go as if you were a wet paper bag, your shoulders sagged, and you felt so tired. You weren’t actually angry with the person sitting next to you, this perky Capitol surgeon with their bright pink eyes and excitable vocal patterns, not really. They were just a handy stand-in for the arena, for the President, for the Capitol, for the emptiness they couldn’t possibly fill, for the whole shitty situation that had changed you forever and now you would have it rubbed in your face every time you looked in a mirror.
But more than anything, they were a stand-in for you. You did this to yourself. You volunteered.
You walk fast toward the station where the train is already waiting, passing by the crowds with peacekeepers flanking the both of you. There’d been no one for your brother to say goodbye to at the Justice Building; your Bro doesn’t have anything to say to Dirk that he hasn’t already said. Besides, while he won’t be coming with you on this train, they’ll be sure to bring him in for interviews and mingling with other victors in a couple of days. The only other goodbye to speak of you have already seen to early this morning, leaving a small bunch of flowers and a whole lot of unspoken words at your mother’s grave. Neither of you remember what she looked like, and Bro refuses to talk about her at all. You’re not even sure what exactly his relationship to her was, if he was her brother or son or cousin or what. Fuck, for all you know he could actually be your dad. It’s not like he’s ever given you a straightforward answer regarding the question of your paternity either, so you suppose it’s possible.
You kind of hope not, even though you’d have a hard time articulating why.
Dirk walks silently next to you, which isn’t exactly a novelty since he does a lot of things silently. It’s just that right now, that silence is growing into this whole other, oppressive thing that is slowly weighing the both of you down. You’ve got to do something about it. Even though you’re pissed as hell that he’s going in despite everything you’ve said, you don’t want him to think that you resent him for it. You can’t afford that kind of distance between you. You need to do this as a team.
You pass by a group of younger kids, and one of them tilts his head to clear his black hair out of his eyes, staring pointedly at Dirk and fingering a knife. You’ve seen him before, training against some other kids. He’s got some skill with that knife, you’d guess he’ll end up volunteering one day. “Who’s that guy?” you wonder idly, thinking it’s something fairly neutral to help you break the silence.
Dirk raises his eyebrows slightly. “That’s the kid who got called before I volunteered, I think. Jack Noir. If he’s pissy about me showing him up, he’s an idiot. He’ll get his chance in a year or two.”
You nod, glancing back at the girl walking silently behind you. You’re her mentor too, and that thought is eating into your conscience like the cool burn of acid, because you’re not here to try to save her. She must know that. Just like the silent girl who followed you into your Games must’ve known that your Bro had already judged her lacking, disposable. It’s not fair, it’s never fair, and some people will always have more odds in their favor. Compared to your brother, she’s the unlucky one, just like someone from Eleven or Twelve has basically no chance compared to her. The game is always rigged, and there can only be one victor. Nothing can change that. Acting as if she’s not even there won’t change that, and it also makes you a complete tool.
You turn around and allow the corners of your mouth to tilt into something that could almost be called a smile, reaching out a hand to her as you keep walking backwards toward the train. “So you already know my name, but for the purposes of being civilized and observing the niceties I guess we can pretend for a moment, right? Dave Strider. And you are?”
“Bianca,” she says and takes your paler hand in her dark brown, freckled one. Both her voice and her handshake are surprisingly steady, her head held high. She’s tall and broad-shouldered, with hair that surrounds her head like a big honey coloured cloud, her eyes dark and inscrutable. “Bianca Malika.”
“Nice to meet you,” you lie, and her lips tremble in a suppressed smile. She gets the joke. She knows you don’t want to have to kill her. Fuck this. “Hey, how about we sit down a while later and you can tell me what your specialties are, what you do best and so on, and we can work out a strategy for you. How’s that sound?” You’ll draw the line at actively sabotaging her, because it’s a dirty fucking thing to do and in the end it won’t make one sorry lick of difference, will it? There will come a moment when you decide to prioritize Dirk over her, there’s no changing that, but until then you’ll do what you can.
“Thank you,” she says. It’s all that you can offer, and she’s smart enough not to ask for more.
The moment 73rd Hunger Games has begun, Dirk is off his platform and running, but not toward the Cornucopia. He’s heading for Bianca, and the moment she sees him coming she goes motionless like cornered prey. No, you think as you lean closer to the screen and forget to breathe, like a statue; like a monument. She’s the daughter of stone cutters, and she carves herself into your mind where she stands, tall and proud. While the bloodbath commences only fifty yards away or so, she and Dirk fight hand to hand, fast and brutal, no quarter given on either side. This isn’t a show, it’s a transaction, and it’s over within minutes. The cameras show her neck being efficiently snapped from several different angles, while the commentators crow that this is a classic Strider move, cutting briefly to your Bro doing the same thing, and then you. Even though they keep talking through it, you can feel that peculiar crunch and pop in your very bones.
When the screen once more shows Dirk, he’s bending down over her body and pulling her token off her finger, a simple gold ring with pearls. One commentator speculates that perhaps it’s a trophy, but you know what it’s really all about. Instead of the ring being returned with her coffin to her parents, Dirk will return it himself, and he will look into their eyes as he does so. It’s about taking responsibility for what he’d done. You must do the same.
You look over at the folder containing Bianca’s strategy, the careful plan she and you had made together, with a couple of pages written by her stylist and prep team, a handful of notes you’d made during her interview, and a list of sponsors who had shown interest in her. You reach over and open it, and a small card with a garish looking teddy bear on the front falls out of it. Inside, someone has written, ‘You were a victor to us before anyone else’ in swirly letters and glittery ink, and it’s signed with three different kiss marks in different shades of lipstick. A congratulation card from her prep team in case she won. The same three colours had been worked into her braids during her interview, you remember distantly.
You’ll get rid of the card and the sketches for her different costumes, you decide, because her family doesn’t need to see that shit. But you pry her smiling photograph from the inside of the folder. Decent photos in color and everything are hard to come by in the districts, and they might not have a single one of her. Giving it to her parents is the decent thing to do, even if it’s a piss poor apology for having been able to do nothing for her. Nothing at all. There was no time.
You know why Dirk did it, though. He’d meant it as a sort of mercy. It meant she never had to make any difficult decisions, never had to sully her hands, never had to suffer more than necessary. It also means that you never had to make that call, never had to decide to let her die so that Dirk could live. It will never be up to you because Dirk took it out of your hands. Just like Bro, he will don the slipped halo and wash his hands in blood if he has to.
He’s in the small valley containing the Cornucopia now, easily dodges a flung spear, parries the hand trying to plunge a dagger into his gut, kicks his opponent hard in the knee and wrestles her weapon out of her hand. You look away as he buries it in her eye, but not for long, because he’s fighting for his life and you need to see, need to remember. He pulls the knife out, barely noticing the spray of blood that covers his face and his neck, and flings it into the thigh of his next attacker. Doesn’t bother to finish the job, that’s not the priority right now. He’s digging through the loot surrounding the Cornucopia looking for…
The moment his hand closes around the hilt of a sword, you feel some sort of tension start to gradually ease out of your chest. That’s it. You repeat it to yourself aloud. “That’s it.” Dirk bends down and peeks into a backpack, then slings it onto his back where it makes a heavy metal sound at the moment of impact. Your arena had been a more urban landscape, a mix of different ruins in varying stages of decay, a perfect setting for stealth and traps. But Dirk’s is a maze of bare, sharp rocks with a network of metal structures far above bridging the chasms. You can tell it’ll be a race of who manages to make it to the top, because anyone who stays down low will be at the mercy of those above, and then the survivors will settle it all on the narrow metal bridges. So Dirk’s pack probably contains climbing gear and maybe some rations if he’s lucky, because so far you haven’t seen a single thing to eat.
You lean back in your sofa as he carves his way away from the Cornucopia, leaving a couple more kills behind him. Next he needs to find an undisturbed place to start to climb, away from the rest of the careers who are watching him go from the other end of the valley, calculating. They’ll probably come for him first, though it’s possible they’ll make another attempt to make him join them. You know he won’t. If there’s anything Bro has drilled into your heads, it’s that allies will only slow you down, and in the end they will stab you in the back. How can it be any other way, with only one victor?
You hear the swish of your door sliding open, footsteps across your carpet, and you sigh quietly. Your guest is early. Still, it won’t do to make him feel unwelcome. As always, he’s paid a lot to be here, and you need to keep him in a good mood. As long as he wants you, he’s got a vested interest in keeping Dirk alive as well.
So you lean into his hand on your neck and hold back your shiver of disgust, raising an eyebrow. “Can’t a mentor keep an eye on his charge for a little while longer?” you ask, keeping your tone dry and teasing.
“He’s your brother, you know he’s going to survive just fine. Besides, I think I’ve already told you that I’ll make sure of it.” He tilts your chin up with one finger, breathing sickly sweet smoke into your face. Does he fucking have to smoke in your own goddamn apartment? But of course you can’t tell him to shove his disgusting cigarette somewhere intimate and painful, no matter how much you want to. “I’m looking forward to meeting him,” he says, and you just raise your eyebrows at him instead of telling him what a sick fuck he is. It’s pretty bad when the fact that he’s at least twice your age is a secondary concern.
“Yeah, everyone tells me he’s the charming one,” you tell him, which is too much of a blatant lie to actually piss him off. “That’s why you want to see him, right? You’re sick of my boorish and inelegant ways and long for the sweet poetry of Dirk’s conversation.”
Despite how that’s obviously a joke, he shrugs, arranging his slicked-back hair with his free hand. “For a district boy you really aren’t that bad. I mean, it’s not like I expect your conversation to be as riveting as that of someone raised in the Capitol, but I don’t mind listening to you. I’m actually really patient with you in that regard, so I don’t see why you can’t just give me credit for that.”
You roll your eyes behind your shades, glancing briefly at the TV screen again. It’s following someone else now, so presumably that means that Dirk’s current status is relatively uneventful. Covering ground, probably.
“I’m being real patient with the fact that you’re still wearing your clothes, Cronus, so maybe we can both give each other credit for being the goddamn saints we are. Or you could just get to it, that’s also an option. I’m waiting. Shit, I’m languishing. If I perish before you fuck me, they’re going to raise a fucking statue in my honor right on this spot. Here lies a horny teenager who never got the cock he rightly deserved. Imagine how embarrassing that would be for you.”
You shoot off at the mouth because it’s easier that way, because he’ll feel smug and focus on something else than talking to you, and you can go through the motions and not think about the girl you just watched die, your brother in the Games, the ghosts that scream your name whenever you close your eyes. Just let it happen. Just let it be. You need his money to get Dirk gifts in the arena, so just tune out his hands on your body, his lips on your neck, don’t swear at him even when he stubs out his cigarette on your collarbone and laughs. Just let shit flow. You’ll gladly do this and anything else that’s necessary, if that means your brother comes home alive. You’re all bought and sold, inside the arena and outside too, because you never really leave. You just become a tribute to the rich and bored in the Capitol instead of the Gamemakers. Another puppet cradled in President Scratch's immaculate white gloves.
This is the one thing you didn’t mention to Dirk when you tried to get him to not volunteer, even though it’s possibly the one thing that might’ve truly swayed him. You just couldn’t bring yourself to say it, couldn’t find the words to explain that the freedom he now thought you had was false. That your visits to the Capitol were nothing more than another iron bar in your window, another stitch in your lips. Maybe you’re afraid that he’d blame himself for not insisting on going in first, for not being able to protect you from this.
Maybe you’re afraid that if he went in anyway, he wouldn’t be fighting as hard to save a life that no longer belongs to him.
You don’t know. You sink on your knees on the carpet in front of the TV, reaching over and pressing the mute button on the remote. But you see the light of the screen reflected in Cronus’ eyes as he leans back, know that he keeps watching, hoping to catch a glimpse of your brother. You’ll do anything, that's what you tell yourself. Absolutely anything. And you hope that one day, Dirk will forgive you.