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You can’t pick your family. No one can. It isn’t anything anyone can help. The same way you can’t pick what district you are born into.
Wyatt didn’t consider himself a Booker Boy. He was part of the family, sure. Part of his Pa and his Ma. Both things he’d never been particularly happy about.
All Wyatt had ever tried to do was be a good son. He did the math his Pa had always pressed him to do. If his Ma needed help, he did whatever she needed. Overall, he really just wanted to be a good person. So when the time came he finally did what most good District Twelve men did and worked the mines.
Compared to most families in the Seam, his family fared pretty well… but the Seam was the Seam. The work that made up most of their money wasn’t the hard-earned script of the mines, despite his dedication. Any real money was made beneath the law. As the McCoy’s and many others knew, beneath ethics at times too.
Wyatt wished he could have been a simple bootlegger like Haymitch. Better yet, he wished he had the skills that matter. The kind used for hunting. A talent a few families had kept alive throughout the generations under the nose of the Peacekeepers.
Bootlegging or hunting would have allowed him a little peace. Some space away from people that Wyatt actually craved. Everyone was always itching for his thoughts on something or another and looking at him eagerly for answers that might benefit their pockets. The rest of the time, he was pressed practically back-to-back in the cramped space of the mines.
Haymitch had pinpointed himself. He wasn’t exactly a people person. Not as bad as Maysilee per say, but the Booker Boys had a reputation, and he was strange even to them. Something he had always known said a lot.
Wyatt didn’t know if he could blame his Pa for the skills he’d developed in math, but he sure wanted to. It used to make his stomach twist, being seen as so strange. The fact it was usually a ‘good’ strange didn’t matter. Strange was strange, setting him apart from both the Booker Boys and any peaceful future he’d secretly dreamed of.
The bathroom of the tribute apartment made Wyatt feel a little more at ease. It felt a little more like home with the steam from the hot water. Not at all like he was in his house, but like he was back in District Twelve. Warm humidity coating all his body outside the water, unlike the dry Capitol air.
As much as Wyatt didn't want to be a Booker Boy, he didn’t want to be a miner stuck in the scorching heat of the mines. Of course, most people back home didn’t want to be a miner either. He wasn’t all that different from everyone else if someone took the time to think about him instead of his family. Broadly speaking.
Wyatt had ended up one of a thousand, two hundred and twenty-four other tributes. Okay, maybe he wasn’t like everyone else, but he was just like a thousand two hundred and twenty-three other poor souls. Not counting victors since he wasn’t winning hoping or planning to win the games.
Every new development was a new number. Odds were constantly changing behind his eyelids as his thoughts attempted to run with the information. Wyatt tried to dismiss those at the moment, in favor of thinking what hope he had in life even if he did get back home.
If he won the games, what did that mean? Three to five people would definitely be making a fair bit of money off him. He would be praised and likely paraded. Both by his parents and the Capitol. Maybe by District Twelve as a whole, but with just one victor in their history he couldn’t be certain how the general population would respond to him… because if he won that meant he’d let two, three, of their own die.
Wyatt would get to live in Victor’s Village. He probably wouldn’t have to work ever again, definitely not in the mines. Boy, oh boy would his Pa have a grand time enjoying the spoils of his newfound trauma. Something he, nor anyone inside, would ever be able to escape the Hunger Games without.
Outside of living, surviving his last reaping, what had Wyatt thought he’d want in life? Maybe a couple of friends to share laughs at. Ones that weren’t waiting to benefit off the oddsmaker. Ideally a partner one day to love, that saw him as a man and not a future Bookers Boy. A life that wasn’t hidden behind doors and surrounded in literal and figurative darkness.
Letting bubbles slip through his pruned fingers as he opened his eyes, Wyatt realized he had small dreams. He had nothing he wanted waiting for him at home. Somehow, he was okay with that because he’d always been a simple man at heart.
Haymitch has his Ma and that sweet little brother he’d heard of. He had an interesting career ahead of him bootlegging, that was far more fun than the mines. Maysilee was a Donner. She had a twin sister, a best friend and luxurious life without stress already there to bask in. Admittedly he hadn’t known much about Louella, but from what he’d been able to tell at least she would have had loving parents waiting for her.
Wyatt considered making his own bet. Personally, amongst District Twelve. Who he could see winning the games and how he could increase their odds.
Smoothing his thumb from his thigh up to his knee, Wyatt thought about the strangeness of it. All of the hair on his body besides what was on the top of his head had been removed. He wasn’t a fan.
Maysilee, if she won, would never survive the Capitol’s parading. Forcing her to wear things and be things she didn’t want to. Drusilla was proving to be enough of a challenge for her to deal with and the crazy lady was a nobody by Capitol standards. Maysilee would find herself killed outside the games within a few years from having to become a mentor.
Haymitch stood a fair chance at life. He wanted it too, even if he’d seemed to accept his fate the same way he had. Wyatt decided it wasn’t a difficult pick between the three of them who he thought could make it out of the games with a life worth living.
Wyatt knew Haymitch and Maysilee were both aware his life wasn’t worth living too. Louella had known it too, before either of the others. None of them were wrong either and he didn’t blame them for their assumptions. Outside his own mind, he was just another Booker’s Boy. The moment he was born, the odds for a happy life had never been in his favor.