Hunger Games Thought Experiment: No-Centre Claudius
I forget whose fault this is, but someone @Irish_Atheist/Oisin55 asked me about my Twos in AUs where they never joined the Program, but still won the Games somehow, for whatever reason. The two I found most interesting were Claudius and Emory, and I ended up playing around with the Claudius one.
errr, over 7k later and he's not even at the Capitol yet, because apparently #pullingalora happens even with silly scenarios. Anyway, I have no idea if I'll finish it, and either way it's way too niche for AO3, so have the first chapter (...) here!
“No,” Mom says when Claudius hands her the pamphlet from the Program recruitment drive at school. “I’m not sending you there. Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not my son over to people who will teach him to be a little monster.”
She called him a little monster the other day all on his own without any help from the Program, but Claudius knows better than to say so. “You get money,” he says, his eyes still fixed on the paper in her hand. It’s denting under the pressure of her fingers, her nails pressing hard and leaving small half-moon circles. Much harder and they’ll rip right through. “The people said so. You get a stipend.”
Mom makes a scrunchy face like she ate something disgusting. “We don’t need the money, Claudius,” she tells him, which makes no sense because she was yelling at Jeremy about it the other day, why didn’t he get a better job so she didn’t have to … do something, Claudius stopped listening, but it’s always the same. Bigger house, better street, invitations to parties around Games-time, dinners with the Director. “What I want is respectability. You think I’m going to get that if people know my son is learning how to kill people?”
You don’t need to go to the Centre to learn how to kill people. Claudius gets in lots of fights all on his own, more than ten fights this year already, and the more he fights the more he learns, where to hit and how to hold his hand so he doesn’t break his thumb. Plus people all over Panem learn to kill without training because other districts win the Games, and there are always murderers everywhere and no one sent them to murder school first.
Claudius has hurt people and embarrassed Mom without the Centre and he’ll probably keep doing it whether he means to or not. That’s not going to get her to agree, though, and so he swallows the flash of rage and tries to keep his face still. “I want to join,” Claudius says calmly, see how calm he is. The nearest knife is ten feet away in a drawer and he could get to it before Mom finished screaming but then she really won’t let him, will she.
Mom narrows her eyes, and she takes the paper and folds it, creasing it with her thumb in one sharp motion. “We’ll see,” she says. “If you can prove to me that you will clean up your behaviour at home and at school, maybe you can join the Program. But you’ll have to show me, all right? I’m serious.”
Claudius folds his hands and grips his fingers tight enough that the joints ache to stop himself from cheering or doing something dumb and embarrassing. Sometimes the more he wants something the less Mom wants to give it to him, but being rational helps. “Thank you,” he says, and the word tastes strange on his tongue but the funny thing is he means it, really, maybe for the first time in his life. Claudius could get used to saying thank you, maybe, if it means he gets to join the Program. “I’ll be good, I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Mom says, and she puts the pamphlet in a kitchen drawer. “Now go outside, you need fresh air and I need some peace and quiet.”
One week later, a kid at school calls Claudius ‘Rat-Face’ and goes home with a broken nose and three teeth in a plastic bag.
“Is this what you call behaving?” Mom demands when she picks Claudius up from school. “Do you really think I’m going to let you go to the Centre after a stunt like this?”
Injustice burns inside Claudius until everything turns red around the edges, but the Program is more important. Nothing else matters. He sucks in a breath full of air and holds it while his chest expands, letting it sit until his lungs ache and burn and he has to blow it all out at once. His pulse pounds in his temples and he tries, really he does, to relax and be calm. They didn’t manage to get all the blood from under his fingernails and the cracks from his knuckles, and Claudius picks at it and flicks the dark reddish-brown flecks onto the car floor.
“If you want me to let you go to the Centre you have to show me you deserve it,” Mom says. Her fingers grip the steering wheel hard. “Sending boys to the hospital is not showing me you deserve anything but a good spanking. You’re lucky they didn’t call the Peacekeepers! How would you like to be sent to the mines, where they put all the criminals and the violent little boys who can’t control themselves?”
This is nothing Claudius has heard before. Normally he pulls back his teeth and snarls at her, only now she has something he wants and he has to listen. It’s stupid and horrible but there’s nothing he can do about it, and so Claudius leans his head against the glass and closes his eyes, letting her words pelt him like hailstorms dinging off the roof during a storm.
He doesn’t promise he won’t ever fight again. Claudius isn’t stupid. He’ll just have to get better at not being caught next time.
The good thing is that Mom stops hurting him when he does something wrong. The bad thing is it’s because she doesn’t have to.
Claudius would rather she smack him or hold his head underwater or shove a bar of scented soap in his mouth or yank his arm until her fingers leave bruises and his shoulder pops, if it meant he could go to the Centre. The problem is Mom knows that, and so when Claudius breaks something, or gets in trouble with a teacher, or brings home a bad test because the numbers danced all over his paper and no one believes him, or when Mom tells him to do something dumb and he forgets and snarls instead of saying yes ma’am, Mom folds her arms and says well then it looks like she isn’t signing the paperwork this week.
It’s the worst threat ever because it works, because even if she’s lying and she didn’t feel like signing it anyway, there’s no way to tell. Claudius can never make it through a week without doing something wrong, he’s a bad kid who can’t control himself and Mom knows it.
She doesn’t think he can do it, that much Claudius can tell without needing to be smart. If he wants to be able to join the Program - if he wants to win the Games and become famous and rich and never have to listen to Mom or anyone else ever again, get his own house in the Village and be best friends with all the Victors and do whatever he wants every day for the rest of his life - then he has to be better.
If he can’t prove to Mom that he deserves to be in the Program, how will he ever convince the recruiters, the trainers or the Capitol? Claudius can do this, he has to.
Except he can’t. Three years pass and Claudius never gets the chance. Every week Mom finds a reason to tell him why she won’t do it, and the worst part is she doesn’t have to look very hard. People don’t stop being mean or stupid, they don’t stop laughing at Claudius’ fancy name and plain face or his temper or how he’s dumb at reading or how he can remember all the Victors and their districts and how each of the Twos won their Games but not how to do math. School doesn’t get easier or less boring, the teachers don’t suddenly understand him, and as more and more kids in his grade join the Program for the stipend and the after-school athletics club, recess turns into a giant minefield where even hiding behind the building with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears can’t help Claudius avoid getting into fights.
The Program only accepts kids from 7-9; if he hits 10 before she signs him up that’s it, he’ll have no chance ever ever ever and the rest of his life will be horrible. The week before Claudius’ tenth birthday he actually cries in front of Mom for the first time in his life. “Please,” he begs. He doesn’t drop to his knees, though he would if he thought it would help, but the tears burn his eyes and choke in his throat and it’s awful, all of it. “Please, Mom, please, I need to go. I’ll do anything, I’ll sleep in the garage forever even in the winter so you don’t have to look at me, please please please let me go!”
Mom folds her arms, and her whole face pinches around the nose like someone is pulling her skin back into her head from behind her skull. “I’ll talk to them this week,” she says. “They might not even want you.”
Claudius doesn’t trust himself to talk. For the first time in active remembrance he actually hugs her, flings himself at her and wraps his arms around her waist, burying his face in her stomach. Mom freezes, her belly going tight beneath his cheek, and she lets one hand fall on top of his head. “No promises,” she says, her tone going a bit high-pitched. “If they say no then that’s it, do you understand? I don’t want you throwing a tantrum at me over something that’s not my fault.”
Claudius nods, but they won’t say no. They can’t. In the whole history of the Program there can’t be any kid who wants to join more than he does, it’s not possible. They’ll let him in and then everything will change forever.
The world crashes around him a week later, when Mom comes back from her visit to the Centre and shakes her head. “They didn’t want you,” she says. “They have records of all the kids in the district, and they saw how many times you got in trouble. They said they need children who respect authority and obey the rules.”
An invisible bucket of cold water splashes Claudius right in the face, and he staggers back a step. “But you said -“
“I went and I talked to them, but they don’t want you,” Mom says. Her face is twisted and ugly and she’s smiling, sharp and satisfied, and Claudius can’t breathe and the fire flares up hot in his chest. “It’s up to them to choose, you can’t make them change their minds.”
Claudius sucks in a breath full of broken glass shards. “I don’t believe you,” he says. As soon as the words are out he can’t believe he never saw it before. “You never went to the Centre! You never talked to them at all! You made it up, you lied to me the whole time!”
Mom folds her arms, and Claudius wants to launch himself at her, wants to knock her down and choke her or grab a kitchen knife and hold it to her throat except he can’t, because he’s not in the Program and the Centre won’t protect him. All he can do is stand there, shaking, while she looks down her nose at him. “It wouldn’t matter if I was,” she says, cold and haughty. “It’s too late now, you’re too old. You’re not joining the Program and you’re not learning to kill people and you’re not going to shame this family by connecting us with a bunch of murderers. You’re going to finish school and get a job and make something of your life.” Her face goes red, a vein in her forehead pulsing. “I don’t even know why you want to go there. Is everything we’ve given you not enough?”
“I hate you!” Claudius screams. Only babies say ‘I hate you’ and only babies scream but he doesn’t care, not anymore. What’s the point of being good and mature and behaving if it doesn’t get him anywhere? “I hate you and I’ll kill you! I will!”
“You will not,” Mom says. She grabs him by the arm and twists, and Claudius kicks and thrashes and bites but she’s bigger and stronger and she drags him upstairs. She hauls him into his room and slams the door shut, and a second later the tumblers click as she flicks the lock.
Claudius throws himself at the door even though it’s no good, this is a solid District 2 house not some cheap Twelve particle board, keeps going until his shoulder aches and his muscles tremble and he collapses to the floor. “I hate you,” he says one more time, voice shaky, but she doesn’t answer.
She leaves him there for three days. Claudius trashes his room, smashing the mirror and ripping up the papers in his desk, pulling out the drawers and stomping on them until the wood cracks. He drinks from the sink in the adjoining bathroom and chews on his pencils to trick his stomach into thinking he’s eating, and his insides crawl and gnaw and everything hurts. At night he goes dead quiet, pressing his ear to the wall to listen for sounds of the Games playing on the TV downstairs, but the volume is too low for him to hear it.
She lets him out the day after his birthday. She doesn’t say anything, no speeches or threats or anything, just unlocks the door and walks away. Claudius stays in his room one more day out of pure stubbornness, even though he’s lightheaded and keeps running into the dresser and everything takes a hundred times more effort.
When he does go downstairs Jeremy has gone to work and Gloria is in the living room, reading. Claudius hesitates at the end of the hallway, but he almost fell walking down the stairs and moving makes everything hurt, so it’s time. He opens the fridge, finds a bowl of leftovers and eats it all in minutes - then has to run to the bathroom to throw it all up after.
Gloria doesn’t speak to him for almost a week after that. Jeremy he doesn’t see, but that’s no different. When she finally does, it’s to ask him to set the table. Claudius almost, almost tells her to go fuck herself - the words rise up inside him like vomit - but then what does it matter? No Centre, no Arena, no Victors’ Village. Why shouldn’t he do his chores?
He sets the table without looking at anyone, eats his dinner without glancing up from his plate, and goes back upstairs without a word.
District 2 loses the Games, and nothing matters.
The year of Claudius’ third Reaping, there are whispers that this year the Volunteers will withhold.
It’s happened once before, the year after Claudius was born. The pair chosen that year were young, under fifteen both of them, and they died in the bloodbath when the pair from One carved them up almost before they left their platforms. Since then Two has had a rush of Victors followed by a dry spell, and the country is grumbling with reports of revolts and supply stoppages and the Peacekeepers not doing enough to stop it.
None of that actually comes back to the people of Two and the kids who step up onto that stage, but when has that mattered? Claudius has managed to survive almost a decade and a half of Gloria’s screaming and shoving him into cupboards and her fingernails slicing open his cheek, of Jeremy hiding in his office and ignoring the shouting and breaking furniture, of Peacekeepers striding right past when Claudius walks by on his way to school with his eye swollen shut and nose crooked. The Centre shutting its doors and leaving Claudius to rot in hell because he doesn’t listen well enough to orders, not even giving him the chance to try to change their minds.
Nobody cares about anybody, and that’s right here in the same district, same city, same house. If people can’t care about each other here, why should the Capitol care about Two? If Gloria wants to blame Claudius for ruining her life and Jeremy for failing to give her the life she deserves, nothing’s stopping her. If the Capitol wants to pretend that the citizens in Two could have done something that would stop riots in Eight or derailments in Six or fruit spoiling in Eleven, why not? It’s all stupid.
Maybe it’s a good thing Claudius didn’t join the Program. He hears the kids at school before they disappear for Residential, spouting off all this crock about honour and serving the district and bringing back glory and everything else. Claudius might have learned to fight and kill and claw his way out of the middle of the pack that way but he never would have been able to spout off all that duty bullshit and sound convincing. Probably better to fail before he started than to get to the end on merit but loose because he can’t play the sycophant well enough.
Oh well. He’ll turn fifteen near the end of the Games and that means only one more year he has to stay in school, since quarry laws technically apply to the whole district to keep things simple. After that - well, who knows, but there has to be something he can do that isn’t killing or reading or math. Any idiot can smash rocks, maybe he’ll run away and become a miner somewhere, wouldn’t Gloria love that. Or maybe he’ll follow her footsteps and find a pretty girl to marry and make his life miserable.
The future is terrifying, far away and too close all at once, and so Claudius shoves it back. He lets the bored attendant prick his finger and smear the sample of his blood on the paper, then shuffles his way near the front of the crowd. If nothing else this time of year it’s fun to watch the Volunteers, try to guess if one of them will make it this time. So far Claudius has guessed no both times since coming to the Square, and both times they died, messy and choking. Maybe he has a future as a Games predictor, one of those people who takes bets and talks about the odds, as long as he can get someone else to do the numbers.
This year they call the girls first. The escort calls out “Marietta Branscombe!” and Claudius snorts under his breath at the social climber name that marks her parents as coming from a similar cadre as his. The cameras swing around to find her and there she is, small and dark and maybe thirteen, hair pinned up on top of her head, eyes big and brown and wide. “Are there any Volunteers?” the escort trills, and the entire square falls silent.
Now would be the time for a dramatic gust of wind, but it’s July and the air is heavy with summer heat. Nobody moves - nobody breathes, including Claudius, who spent the past two Reapings mostly tuned out and bored - until the escort smiles and says, “Well then, come on up, you brave little thing!”
She makes it all the way to the stage and stands there, wide-eyed and trembling, and at the back of the square near the edge of the cordoned zone will be a line of Seniors, standing stone-faced with their hands clasped over their bracelets. Claudius’ heart starts thumping and his breath sticks heavy in his chest and holy shit holy shit holy shit they’re really not going to do it.
A mild clamour explodes from the back of the crowd when the escort moves on to the boys’ bowl but the Peacekeepers take care of it. Claudius doesn’t have to turn and crane to know that the parents have either been dragged away or stunned or threatened with rifles in their faces. The girl onstage starts crying, not a wild blubber but silently, tears running down her face as she stands frozen, and the cameras zoom in close to catch every glimmer of moisture on her cheeks.
District 2 is in trouble this year, Claudius realizes, only it’s not just about taking their children. It’s about having a tribute stand on stage crying like a little baby - like a Twelve or a Nine or a Six when they snap out of the stupor enough to realize what’s going on - and the cameras transmitting that image all over the country. This year District 2 will be weak and messy and bloody just like the rest of them, and whoever goes in next year will have to try extra hard to try to erase that legacy. Claudius hated people seeing him cry way more than he hated being smacked in the face, and he might not be carved from the mountains with a chisel of honour but he’ll bet for Two it’s very much the same.
He almost misses the name of the boy, his mind spinning and struggling to focus, but half a second later it slams into him like the shockwave from an explosion too far away to feel at the time of impact. “Claudius Beaumont!” the escort shouts, and there’s the cameras zooming and panning and searching for the stricken sacrifice, ready to put another crying boy on the three-storey screen.
What they get is Claudius, shocked and pale and laughing, unable to do anything else for a full five seconds before the spell breaks and he pulls himself forward. The crowd parts, the stage moves closer as his vision tunnels at the sides and everything whooshes around his ears, surreal and distant. The stairs recede in front of him and he almost stumbles but he catches himself, holds his head up and makes it to the top without tripping.
The crowd is still silent, the escort waiting with one hand extended, lavender and gold filigreed fingers curled in welcome, but Claudius ignores the hand and stalks over to his side of the stage. He’d imagined this a hundred times as a boy but of course he’d been taller, and more muscled, towering over the escort and his beautiful, statuesque district partner. He’d thrown up his hands and roared at the crowd and they’d roared right back, and everything was heady and amazing and if he dreamed it Claudius always woke up aching and choking back furious tears.
Now it’s nothing like that, hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at him while the silence thickens and rises like the shimmers of heat over the distant concrete. And this is District 2, this is a country where five out of six Volunteers lie dead in the dust but they step up anyway and never cry, never beg, never crack even under the worst pressure. Somewhere the Capitol is watching, the cameras hovering like invisible carrion vultures, lingering on the girl’s tears and her hitching breaths and waiting for Claudius to break down, too.
“My, don’t you look eager,” says the escort, and Claudius snaps his head around to look. “Are you excited for the honour?”
A lump sits in his throat and there are flutters in his chest because Claudius hasn’t trained for this, he’s never held a weapon bigger than a kitchen knife or a stick snatched up on the playground, he’s never killed a man, never done half the things he can’t even imagine because he doesn’t have the knowledge, let alone the skill. But Claudius has fought every day since he was four years old; he knows the crack of bone under his knuckle, the strangely smooth slide of dried blood on his fingertips. He knows pain and darkness and the cramping in his belly after days without food and no idea when more will come. He knows cold and loneliness and the complete loss of hope.
The odds are never in his favour. Chances are he’ll be dead in four weeks, but who cares? Either he dies in the Arena or he spends the rest of his life doing nothing but waiting to die later. As far as those odds go, Claudius will take them.
He steps up to the microphone, and he might not be eighteen and six feet tall but at least he doesn’t need to stand on tiptoes, so that’s something. “Oh yeah,” he says, and bares his teeth. “I can’t wait.”
Claudius ignores his district partner and throws one fist up in the air. For one long, painful second there’s silence - the thudding of his heart loud enough that the mic must be picking it up - but then, in a slow ripple, the crowd responds. It’s not the thunderous cheering of a normal year, people screaming and pounding their feet against the concrete, but Claudius shouts and pumps his arm and dares them to find their pride again. The clapping starts in scattered patches but then it grows like a flash rainstorm striking the roof, and the Seniors at the back stare up at him with jealousy and hatred on their faces but too damn bad.
When the escort pulls them away toward the Justice Building Claudius can hardly breathe. The door closes with a heavy bang, cutting off the chanting of DIS-trict 2! DIS-trict 2!, but while the words are too muffled to catch the rhythm remains.
Claudius laughs again and covers his face as they lead him through the marbled lobby. He’s going to die, but if nothing else the history books will talk about this Reaping for a very long time.
Claudius waits for the train in the nicest room he’s ever seen. Everything is smooth, dark wood or smooth, pale marble or smooth, mottled grey limestone, and the Peacekeepers leave him there alone and so Claudius spends a minute just touching things, running his hand over the walls and the columns. He sits down on the bench, and it’s hard and plain and not that comfortable but what’s amazing is that even though it’s wood it doesn’t squeak at all. Everything here is measured and precise and perfect, nothing cheap or slapdash about it.
It’s exactly the kind of style Gloria would kill herself to have and spent her life imitating, only anyone who knows quality could tell the difference in a second. Claudius hopes at least once she can see the inside of this building so she’ll know how a building looks when it has actual class. She’d probably puff up like a frog and explode from trying to take it all in while swallowing her own inadequacy.
Sooner than Claudius expected the door opens, only it’s not a Peacekeeper or his mentor, it’s Gloria, eyes red and face splotchy. Jeremy follows her, silent and grave as always, hanging behind her like a tall, blond shadow. “I don’t believe this,” Gloria bursts out when the door closes. “How could this happen? After everything we did to keep you safe and out of the Games, now this?”
Claudius frowns, but Gloria never makes sense when she’s in one of her ranting moods and he’s learned not to try. “I’m going to fight,” he tells her. “I’m not going to let them kill me. Finnick Odair was my age when he won, if he can do it then so can I.”
Finnick Odair won the first year Claudius was eligible for the Reaping, and if he hadn’t been a Four then Claudius would admire the ruthless way he tore through the Arena, including his supposed allies. Gloria pinches his nose. “Claudius,” she says in a way that makes him feel like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe, “Finnick Odair had more sponsors than anyone in the history of the Games. You don’t have any of that. What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Fight,” Claudius says again, forceful this time. “Outliers win one out of three years and they don’t have any training at all. I’m going to win and I’m going to come back.”
“And then what,” Gloria says, her voice screeching half-hysterical. “You expect us to pack up and go live in the Village with those monsters? You’re not like them - we’re not like them! We’re normal people, not murderers! I don’t want to hear you talking about how you’re going to kill to get out of there! I don’t want to think about what would come back!”
Everything rushes around Claudius again like he’s back in the square walking up toward the steps. “What do you want me to do, die? So I won’t embarrass you by killing anybody?” Claudius clenches his fists. “Being a Victor is an honour and I’m going to earn it! I’m not going to hide in a hole and wait for everybody else to die like I’m from Eleven!”
Gloria opens her mouth to speak, but surprise of surprises, Jeremy puts a hand on her shoulder. “Gloria,” he says, and his voice sounds thick, almost rusty, like he hasn’t used it in a long time. Claudius honestly can’t remember the last time he’s heard it. “Stop. Let the boy fight.”
She whirls on him, Claudius forgotten, because her anger is sharp and piercing but it’s not a bomb that explodes in all directions, it’s a gun that shoots one thing at a time. “You! Don’t tell me how to raise our son after all those years when you did nothing! Is it my fault I tried to keep him away from those people so he’d grow up decent? Is it my fault I don’t want him becoming a murderer and attaching that to our name? Is it my fault -“
“Gloria,” Jeremy says again, insistent. He almost raises his voice but backs off at the last second, and he flings up his hands as though to avoid a blow. “He’s been Reaped. Whatever happens is up to him now. It’s out of our hands.”
It’s a typical Jeremy comment, seeing as that’s how he’s treated everything about his son and the house and his wife’s rages for Claudius’ entire life, but today Claudius is willing to let it slide because it works in his favour. He takes a second to examine the walls again, tall and strong and proud, and soaks in some of the strength from the mountains just visible out the window behind him.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Claudius says, calling her that for the first time in years. “When I win, I won’t come back home. I won’t tell anyone who my parents are, and I’ll go right to the Village and you’ll never see me again. I’ll tell my mentor that you’re dead or something and you won’t have to be embarrassed.”
“What!” Gloria explodes, which is about what Claudius thought she might do. There’s no way to make her happy, not ever. “After all we did for you, you’re going to pretend you don’t even know us -“
Sometimes, Claudius thinks Gloria has some kind of parasite in her skull, sitting on her brain and nibbling little bits of it here and there, because nothing she says makes sense. But the Games are in a week and Claudius is less than a month away from fifteen and he’s going into the Hunger Games after all, twenty-three other kids who will try to kill him and at least four who actually could, and there’s no time for this. Not when Gloria’s words scrape his bones and make his skin itch and crawl into his mind to whisper and slide doubts between his thoughts.
Claudius backs away, puts his hands over his ears and hums the Panem Anthem. Gloria’s face turns even redder but Claudius only hums louder, humming and humming until the music fills his brain and he imagines the low rumble of the drums and the soaring strings and the march of the brass. He squeezes his eyes shut and pictures that music playing around him, rising higher and louder as he stands on the stage with the lights blaring in his eyes and a crown sitting heavy on his forehead.
A hand touches his, and Claudius jumps. Gloria and Jeremy have gone, and instead a Peacekeeper stands in front of him, face impassive behind the helmet. “Their time was up,” she says, and Claudius drops his hands. “You still have some time to wait, so you may as well take a seat.”
Claudius does, dropping onto the bench. He starts to swing his feet and scuff his heels against the floor like he does at school when the teachers send him to the office, only he freezes just before his shoes leave a mark because this isn’t school, this is the Justice Building, and Claudius isn’t here because he got in trouble. Instead he pulls his legs up under him to avoid temptation, leans back against the wall and waits.
The door opens again and Claudius snaps awake, embarrassed to be dozing on the more important day of his life so far, except that the room is so warm and the sunlight streamed through the window and he’d gotten sleepy watching the dust motes dance in the beam. He scrambles to his feet, shaking away the fuzziness, and that extra second to focus his attention means he doesn’t shriek like a startled baby when Lyme, Victor of the 55th Hunger Games, steps into the room.
Funny how a room that seemed so spacious a few minutes ago looks cramped and small when it has to fit all of Lyme inside. She’s the tallest person Claudius has ever seen, and Claudius is tall for fourteen but he still has to crane his neck to meet her eyes. She looks down at him, solemn and steady, and her blue-grey eyes hold Claudius still as she tilts her head and studies him. Claudius holds himself very still and prays that whatever she’s looking for, she finds it in him.
Finally her mouth quirks, just a little, and she steps back and folds her arms. “Let’s get to the train,” Lyme says. Even her voice gives Claudius the shivers, powerful and strong and most definitely a Victor’s voice. He doesn’t sound like that at all, though luckily he got over most of the cracking and squeaking last summer. “There will be cameras and crowds, and more people than you’ve probably seen packed together in your life. They’ll have cameras and the flashes will be going off in your face, but you can’t let that get to you. I need you to look calm and confident through all of it, can you do that?”
Claudius pulls himself up straight, squaring his shoulders. “Yes ma’am.”
“You might think it’s fine for you to slip a little because it’s only for a second but you can’t,” Lyme says. Her eyes narrow and Claudius feels the weight as though she’d settled both hands on his shoulders and pressed. “The cameras see everything. Once we go through those doors you can’t so much as twitch. Don’t smile, don’t wave, just think about whatever you had in your mind on stage that let you reach the crowd like you did. Understand?”
“Yes ma’am,” Claudius says again, and she nods. The acknowledgement sends a tiny thrill shooting through him, and he rides the wave of bravery before it fizzles. “Are you going to be my mentor?”
This time her mouth pulls to the side a little, reminding Claudius of when he used to catch himself biting his lip and try to stop it because that’s a baby gesture. It doesn’t look babyish when Lyme does it but it does make her seem worried, and of course she is. Normally she has tributes four years older with eleven more years of training, and they’re always sharp and athletic and pretty and now she has him. Of course she isn’t thrilled, but the Reaping can’t be changed and Claudius will never win if he lets himself think of everything stacked against him.
“Yeah,” Lyme says finally. “Follow me, and remember, even if they get close, I won’t let them touch you, so don’t flinch.”
Claudius says “Yes ma’am” again, and that’s three times without a hint of irony and he didn’t even have to think about it. When Lyme talks the whole world stops to listen, and Claudius knows deep down into the centre of himself that whatever she asks, he’ll die trying to do it for her. Mentors are the most important person in a tribute’s life, so say the commentaries, and less than five minutes in Claudius can see why.
He might have done the same if Brutus or Callista or Artemisia walked through the door and demanded his attention but they didn’t, and now Lyme is his mentor and Claudius has to trust her or he’ll die. If nothing else, he’s always been good at surviving.
She is right about the crowds and the cameras, and if Lyme hadn’t warned him Claudius might have flung his hands in front of his eyes to protect himself. It’s the middle of the morning, the sun shining bright and hot over the rooftops, but the cameras are blinding anyway, and the sunlight reflects from the metal casings and dances in his eyes and it takes all of Claudius’ willpower not to squint.
His district partner, Marietta, doesn’t manage quite so well, and while she’s stopped crying and wiped her face, she still holds herself with her shoulders too high and her head off to one side. Emory stands behind her, one hand on her shoulder, and she’s not quite as tall or broad as Lyme but she’s still very Two, big and solid like the quarries. She won the year Claudius was born, and she might not be his favourite but he’s not going to sneer at her presence, definitely not.
Lyme told him not to smile and so he doesn’t, but he basks in the warm feeling of being here, flanked by two of the most powerful Victors in Panem, of being able to leave his stupid home and his stupid family and his stupid life and actually do something. He keeps his mouth straight but he lets it fill his eyes, feels them crinkle and tighten and his gaze sharpen. He keeps his head up, and he looks as many cameras straight on as he can, pretending he knows all their secrets and they’d better be nice to him if they don’t want him telling everyone.
At last they make it to the train, and Claudius climbs the steps and stands inside the carriage door with Lyme at his side as Emory and Marietta take the other end. “Salute,” Lyme says in a low voice, raising her fist to her chest, and Claudius does the same. The train lurches side to side a few inches as the engine hisses, then the whole thing surges forward and Claudius digs his feet down into the floor to ground himself so he doesn’t wobble or fall over. People flash past in a sea of colour, skin and clothes and cameras, until finally the train curves around the bend and the square disappears from view.
“Now we can relax a little,” Lyme says, and she drops a hand to rest on Claudius’ head for a brief moment. “Come inside and we’ll get you something to eat before we start preparations.”
Claudius promised himself he wouldn’t gawk in the Capitol like some outer-quarry hick miner, but he didn’t expect the train to be so stunning. His feet sink in the plush carpet, and the walls are made of a rich, red wood that Claudius can’t identify but knows is not from Two. Heavy crystal chandeliers dangle from the ceiling, waving gently and tinkling with the motion of the train, and the prisms catch the light and throw tiny rainbow slivers all around the room. Claudius lifts his hand so one of the rainbows lands on his hand, and he laughs and closes his fingers even though he knows you can’t actually hold light.
He looks up to see Lyme watching him, and Claudius flushes and drops his arm. “I won’t stare in the Capitol,” he says. “I know Careers aren’t supposed to be impressed by anything.”
Lyme lets out a quiet snort. “The train is fine,” she reassures him. “No cameras here. Get it out of your system now and you can be as unimpressed as you need to be when you get there.”
There’s no reason at all for the trains to be this fancy when they’re only used a handful of times per year; these are the tribute trains, not passenger lines. Claudius asked a bored Peacekeeper once, and she told him that only tributes and Victors and mentors get to ride them, and of course the staff. When Claudius asked how much it cost to maintain a train like that, she shook her head and told him to move along. Claudius learned years ago that adults say things like that when they don’t know or don’t want to say the answer.
Here, though, standing and staring up at the light fixtures and the plush fabric on the seats that Claudius has never even seen before, something occurs to him. “Do they do this so we don’t stare so much?” Claudius asks. He runs his hand over the dark purple material, watching in fascination as the colour shifts back and forth as he swipes his hand in different directions. “So we can get used to it, I mean, like you said.”
Lyme gives him a studying look that’s almost sharp, but not quite. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” she says. She sits down on one of the benches, and it’s not exactly funny but it almost is, how she looks out of place and entirely comfortable at the same time. Nothing about Lyme matches this ridiculous fluffy-sparkly carriage, everything shiny and exaggerated and unnecessary, but at the same time she doesn’t look out of place. She sits back, legs spread and feet firmly planted, and she folds her arms loosely in a way that doesn’t make her look like she’s trying to hide, like Jeremy sometimes did.
Claudius bets Lyme could look at home anywhere, if only because she’d glare at anyone who said she didn’t belong. Cropped hair, muscled arms, a crisp suit, and that too clashes with the feathery flowers in the vases on the curlicued drinks cart. She should look ridiculous but she doesn’t, except that anyone else trying to do what she’s doing absolutely would. However she does what she does, Claudius needs to learn how.
She’s watching him, the way the Program recruiters used to watch him when they came to school but Claudius wasn’t allowed to take their brochures home. Like she’s waiting for him to do something interesting and can’t decide if he’s going to disappoint her or not. Claudius has a lot of experience with disappointment, and he recognizes the tension in the air, but this isn’t trying to behave in school or listen to Mom or do his homework without complaining. This is the Hunger Games, and every minute counts.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” Claudius says. You don’t have to join the Program to know that tributes listen to their mentors or they die, even in the outlying districts. One year a girl ignored her mentor’s advice to ally with a boy from another district, and she died the first night because she fell asleep with no one to watch her back. “I’m - I didn’t train but I know how to fight, and I’m not afraid. Of anything.”
“Of anything,” Lyme says, raising an eyebrow, and Claudius immediately gives himself a good mental kick. He’s fourteen and hasn’t seen anything more threatening than schoolyard bullies and Mom locking him in the pantry, and even with just that he’s already lying. He fights back memories of sobbing in the dark and squeezing himself into a ball to hide from the stinking puddle on the floor, feeling his ears turn red. “Well, that’s a good start. You want to tell me why you never joined the Program? The Centre files don’t have anything on you, so I’m a bit surprised.”
Claudius sits up straight. “Files?”
“Yeah.” Lyme taps her fingers against her knee. “Who applies, who gets in, their scores, how far they go. If you like fighting I would’ve thought you at least did a few years. The way you were onstage, I definitely pegged you for having gone through Transition.”
“That can’t be right,” Claudius protests. “If they keep records of anyone who applies, they should have me there.” The memories surface again, and the old injustice burns like an infection. “My mom applied for me, back when I was seven. The Centre didn’t want me, they said I didn’t sound like I’d take orders.”
Lyme pauses, and Claudius watches a few different thoughts flit over her face, pulling at her mouth, her eyebrows, the twitching muscle at the corner of her eye. “I hate to tell you, kid,” Lyme says slowly, “but I think your mom lied.”
“But -“ Claudius starts to protest, to argue and tell her no, no that can’t be right, why would she do that - except that Lyme’s mouth goes hard even as her eyes soften, and right then Lyme might not have ever mentioned parents on television but Claudius knows exactly the kind she had. He sucks in a breath, imagines the rage filling up his mouth like blood and then swallows an air bubble and forces it down, feeling the anger pop somewhere halfway between his throat and his stomach.
“Okay,” Claudius says instead. His fingers itch, and there’s so much to break in this train car, so many sharp things to throw and glasses to smash, but no, he is not a baby, and he has control. He has to. All those years Mom lied to him, all the time she used the Program to get him to listen, she’d lied to him all along, but it doesn’t matter. He’s here, Centre or no Centre, and nothing she can do about it. Claudius raises his head. “Tell me what to do.”
errr, over 7k later and he's not even at the Capitol yet, because apparently #pullingalora happens even with silly scenarios. Anyway, I have no idea if I'll finish it, and either way it's way too niche for AO3, so have the first chapter (...) here!
“No,” Mom says when Claudius hands her the pamphlet from the Program recruitment drive at school. “I’m not sending you there. Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not my son over to people who will teach him to be a little monster.”
She called him a little monster the other day all on his own without any help from the Program, but Claudius knows better than to say so. “You get money,” he says, his eyes still fixed on the paper in her hand. It’s denting under the pressure of her fingers, her nails pressing hard and leaving small half-moon circles. Much harder and they’ll rip right through. “The people said so. You get a stipend.”
Mom makes a scrunchy face like she ate something disgusting. “We don’t need the money, Claudius,” she tells him, which makes no sense because she was yelling at Jeremy about it the other day, why didn’t he get a better job so she didn’t have to … do something, Claudius stopped listening, but it’s always the same. Bigger house, better street, invitations to parties around Games-time, dinners with the Director. “What I want is respectability. You think I’m going to get that if people know my son is learning how to kill people?”
You don’t need to go to the Centre to learn how to kill people. Claudius gets in lots of fights all on his own, more than ten fights this year already, and the more he fights the more he learns, where to hit and how to hold his hand so he doesn’t break his thumb. Plus people all over Panem learn to kill without training because other districts win the Games, and there are always murderers everywhere and no one sent them to murder school first.
Claudius has hurt people and embarrassed Mom without the Centre and he’ll probably keep doing it whether he means to or not. That’s not going to get her to agree, though, and so he swallows the flash of rage and tries to keep his face still. “I want to join,” Claudius says calmly, see how calm he is. The nearest knife is ten feet away in a drawer and he could get to it before Mom finished screaming but then she really won’t let him, will she.
Mom narrows her eyes, and she takes the paper and folds it, creasing it with her thumb in one sharp motion. “We’ll see,” she says. “If you can prove to me that you will clean up your behaviour at home and at school, maybe you can join the Program. But you’ll have to show me, all right? I’m serious.”
Claudius folds his hands and grips his fingers tight enough that the joints ache to stop himself from cheering or doing something dumb and embarrassing. Sometimes the more he wants something the less Mom wants to give it to him, but being rational helps. “Thank you,” he says, and the word tastes strange on his tongue but the funny thing is he means it, really, maybe for the first time in his life. Claudius could get used to saying thank you, maybe, if it means he gets to join the Program. “I’ll be good, I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Mom says, and she puts the pamphlet in a kitchen drawer. “Now go outside, you need fresh air and I need some peace and quiet.”
One week later, a kid at school calls Claudius ‘Rat-Face’ and goes home with a broken nose and three teeth in a plastic bag.
“Is this what you call behaving?” Mom demands when she picks Claudius up from school. “Do you really think I’m going to let you go to the Centre after a stunt like this?”
Injustice burns inside Claudius until everything turns red around the edges, but the Program is more important. Nothing else matters. He sucks in a breath full of air and holds it while his chest expands, letting it sit until his lungs ache and burn and he has to blow it all out at once. His pulse pounds in his temples and he tries, really he does, to relax and be calm. They didn’t manage to get all the blood from under his fingernails and the cracks from his knuckles, and Claudius picks at it and flicks the dark reddish-brown flecks onto the car floor.
“If you want me to let you go to the Centre you have to show me you deserve it,” Mom says. Her fingers grip the steering wheel hard. “Sending boys to the hospital is not showing me you deserve anything but a good spanking. You’re lucky they didn’t call the Peacekeepers! How would you like to be sent to the mines, where they put all the criminals and the violent little boys who can’t control themselves?”
This is nothing Claudius has heard before. Normally he pulls back his teeth and snarls at her, only now she has something he wants and he has to listen. It’s stupid and horrible but there’s nothing he can do about it, and so Claudius leans his head against the glass and closes his eyes, letting her words pelt him like hailstorms dinging off the roof during a storm.
He doesn’t promise he won’t ever fight again. Claudius isn’t stupid. He’ll just have to get better at not being caught next time.
The good thing is that Mom stops hurting him when he does something wrong. The bad thing is it’s because she doesn’t have to.
Claudius would rather she smack him or hold his head underwater or shove a bar of scented soap in his mouth or yank his arm until her fingers leave bruises and his shoulder pops, if it meant he could go to the Centre. The problem is Mom knows that, and so when Claudius breaks something, or gets in trouble with a teacher, or brings home a bad test because the numbers danced all over his paper and no one believes him, or when Mom tells him to do something dumb and he forgets and snarls instead of saying yes ma’am, Mom folds her arms and says well then it looks like she isn’t signing the paperwork this week.
It’s the worst threat ever because it works, because even if she’s lying and she didn’t feel like signing it anyway, there’s no way to tell. Claudius can never make it through a week without doing something wrong, he’s a bad kid who can’t control himself and Mom knows it.
She doesn’t think he can do it, that much Claudius can tell without needing to be smart. If he wants to be able to join the Program - if he wants to win the Games and become famous and rich and never have to listen to Mom or anyone else ever again, get his own house in the Village and be best friends with all the Victors and do whatever he wants every day for the rest of his life - then he has to be better.
If he can’t prove to Mom that he deserves to be in the Program, how will he ever convince the recruiters, the trainers or the Capitol? Claudius can do this, he has to.
Except he can’t. Three years pass and Claudius never gets the chance. Every week Mom finds a reason to tell him why she won’t do it, and the worst part is she doesn’t have to look very hard. People don’t stop being mean or stupid, they don’t stop laughing at Claudius’ fancy name and plain face or his temper or how he’s dumb at reading or how he can remember all the Victors and their districts and how each of the Twos won their Games but not how to do math. School doesn’t get easier or less boring, the teachers don’t suddenly understand him, and as more and more kids in his grade join the Program for the stipend and the after-school athletics club, recess turns into a giant minefield where even hiding behind the building with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears can’t help Claudius avoid getting into fights.
The Program only accepts kids from 7-9; if he hits 10 before she signs him up that’s it, he’ll have no chance ever ever ever and the rest of his life will be horrible. The week before Claudius’ tenth birthday he actually cries in front of Mom for the first time in his life. “Please,” he begs. He doesn’t drop to his knees, though he would if he thought it would help, but the tears burn his eyes and choke in his throat and it’s awful, all of it. “Please, Mom, please, I need to go. I’ll do anything, I’ll sleep in the garage forever even in the winter so you don’t have to look at me, please please please let me go!”
Mom folds her arms, and her whole face pinches around the nose like someone is pulling her skin back into her head from behind her skull. “I’ll talk to them this week,” she says. “They might not even want you.”
Claudius doesn’t trust himself to talk. For the first time in active remembrance he actually hugs her, flings himself at her and wraps his arms around her waist, burying his face in her stomach. Mom freezes, her belly going tight beneath his cheek, and she lets one hand fall on top of his head. “No promises,” she says, her tone going a bit high-pitched. “If they say no then that’s it, do you understand? I don’t want you throwing a tantrum at me over something that’s not my fault.”
Claudius nods, but they won’t say no. They can’t. In the whole history of the Program there can’t be any kid who wants to join more than he does, it’s not possible. They’ll let him in and then everything will change forever.
The world crashes around him a week later, when Mom comes back from her visit to the Centre and shakes her head. “They didn’t want you,” she says. “They have records of all the kids in the district, and they saw how many times you got in trouble. They said they need children who respect authority and obey the rules.”
An invisible bucket of cold water splashes Claudius right in the face, and he staggers back a step. “But you said -“
“I went and I talked to them, but they don’t want you,” Mom says. Her face is twisted and ugly and she’s smiling, sharp and satisfied, and Claudius can’t breathe and the fire flares up hot in his chest. “It’s up to them to choose, you can’t make them change their minds.”
Claudius sucks in a breath full of broken glass shards. “I don’t believe you,” he says. As soon as the words are out he can’t believe he never saw it before. “You never went to the Centre! You never talked to them at all! You made it up, you lied to me the whole time!”
Mom folds her arms, and Claudius wants to launch himself at her, wants to knock her down and choke her or grab a kitchen knife and hold it to her throat except he can’t, because he’s not in the Program and the Centre won’t protect him. All he can do is stand there, shaking, while she looks down her nose at him. “It wouldn’t matter if I was,” she says, cold and haughty. “It’s too late now, you’re too old. You’re not joining the Program and you’re not learning to kill people and you’re not going to shame this family by connecting us with a bunch of murderers. You’re going to finish school and get a job and make something of your life.” Her face goes red, a vein in her forehead pulsing. “I don’t even know why you want to go there. Is everything we’ve given you not enough?”
“I hate you!” Claudius screams. Only babies say ‘I hate you’ and only babies scream but he doesn’t care, not anymore. What’s the point of being good and mature and behaving if it doesn’t get him anywhere? “I hate you and I’ll kill you! I will!”
“You will not,” Mom says. She grabs him by the arm and twists, and Claudius kicks and thrashes and bites but she’s bigger and stronger and she drags him upstairs. She hauls him into his room and slams the door shut, and a second later the tumblers click as she flicks the lock.
Claudius throws himself at the door even though it’s no good, this is a solid District 2 house not some cheap Twelve particle board, keeps going until his shoulder aches and his muscles tremble and he collapses to the floor. “I hate you,” he says one more time, voice shaky, but she doesn’t answer.
She leaves him there for three days. Claudius trashes his room, smashing the mirror and ripping up the papers in his desk, pulling out the drawers and stomping on them until the wood cracks. He drinks from the sink in the adjoining bathroom and chews on his pencils to trick his stomach into thinking he’s eating, and his insides crawl and gnaw and everything hurts. At night he goes dead quiet, pressing his ear to the wall to listen for sounds of the Games playing on the TV downstairs, but the volume is too low for him to hear it.
She lets him out the day after his birthday. She doesn’t say anything, no speeches or threats or anything, just unlocks the door and walks away. Claudius stays in his room one more day out of pure stubbornness, even though he’s lightheaded and keeps running into the dresser and everything takes a hundred times more effort.
When he does go downstairs Jeremy has gone to work and Gloria is in the living room, reading. Claudius hesitates at the end of the hallway, but he almost fell walking down the stairs and moving makes everything hurt, so it’s time. He opens the fridge, finds a bowl of leftovers and eats it all in minutes - then has to run to the bathroom to throw it all up after.
Gloria doesn’t speak to him for almost a week after that. Jeremy he doesn’t see, but that’s no different. When she finally does, it’s to ask him to set the table. Claudius almost, almost tells her to go fuck herself - the words rise up inside him like vomit - but then what does it matter? No Centre, no Arena, no Victors’ Village. Why shouldn’t he do his chores?
He sets the table without looking at anyone, eats his dinner without glancing up from his plate, and goes back upstairs without a word.
District 2 loses the Games, and nothing matters.
The year of Claudius’ third Reaping, there are whispers that this year the Volunteers will withhold.
It’s happened once before, the year after Claudius was born. The pair chosen that year were young, under fifteen both of them, and they died in the bloodbath when the pair from One carved them up almost before they left their platforms. Since then Two has had a rush of Victors followed by a dry spell, and the country is grumbling with reports of revolts and supply stoppages and the Peacekeepers not doing enough to stop it.
None of that actually comes back to the people of Two and the kids who step up onto that stage, but when has that mattered? Claudius has managed to survive almost a decade and a half of Gloria’s screaming and shoving him into cupboards and her fingernails slicing open his cheek, of Jeremy hiding in his office and ignoring the shouting and breaking furniture, of Peacekeepers striding right past when Claudius walks by on his way to school with his eye swollen shut and nose crooked. The Centre shutting its doors and leaving Claudius to rot in hell because he doesn’t listen well enough to orders, not even giving him the chance to try to change their minds.
Nobody cares about anybody, and that’s right here in the same district, same city, same house. If people can’t care about each other here, why should the Capitol care about Two? If Gloria wants to blame Claudius for ruining her life and Jeremy for failing to give her the life she deserves, nothing’s stopping her. If the Capitol wants to pretend that the citizens in Two could have done something that would stop riots in Eight or derailments in Six or fruit spoiling in Eleven, why not? It’s all stupid.
Maybe it’s a good thing Claudius didn’t join the Program. He hears the kids at school before they disappear for Residential, spouting off all this crock about honour and serving the district and bringing back glory and everything else. Claudius might have learned to fight and kill and claw his way out of the middle of the pack that way but he never would have been able to spout off all that duty bullshit and sound convincing. Probably better to fail before he started than to get to the end on merit but loose because he can’t play the sycophant well enough.
Oh well. He’ll turn fifteen near the end of the Games and that means only one more year he has to stay in school, since quarry laws technically apply to the whole district to keep things simple. After that - well, who knows, but there has to be something he can do that isn’t killing or reading or math. Any idiot can smash rocks, maybe he’ll run away and become a miner somewhere, wouldn’t Gloria love that. Or maybe he’ll follow her footsteps and find a pretty girl to marry and make his life miserable.
The future is terrifying, far away and too close all at once, and so Claudius shoves it back. He lets the bored attendant prick his finger and smear the sample of his blood on the paper, then shuffles his way near the front of the crowd. If nothing else this time of year it’s fun to watch the Volunteers, try to guess if one of them will make it this time. So far Claudius has guessed no both times since coming to the Square, and both times they died, messy and choking. Maybe he has a future as a Games predictor, one of those people who takes bets and talks about the odds, as long as he can get someone else to do the numbers.
This year they call the girls first. The escort calls out “Marietta Branscombe!” and Claudius snorts under his breath at the social climber name that marks her parents as coming from a similar cadre as his. The cameras swing around to find her and there she is, small and dark and maybe thirteen, hair pinned up on top of her head, eyes big and brown and wide. “Are there any Volunteers?” the escort trills, and the entire square falls silent.
Now would be the time for a dramatic gust of wind, but it’s July and the air is heavy with summer heat. Nobody moves - nobody breathes, including Claudius, who spent the past two Reapings mostly tuned out and bored - until the escort smiles and says, “Well then, come on up, you brave little thing!”
She makes it all the way to the stage and stands there, wide-eyed and trembling, and at the back of the square near the edge of the cordoned zone will be a line of Seniors, standing stone-faced with their hands clasped over their bracelets. Claudius’ heart starts thumping and his breath sticks heavy in his chest and holy shit holy shit holy shit they’re really not going to do it.
A mild clamour explodes from the back of the crowd when the escort moves on to the boys’ bowl but the Peacekeepers take care of it. Claudius doesn’t have to turn and crane to know that the parents have either been dragged away or stunned or threatened with rifles in their faces. The girl onstage starts crying, not a wild blubber but silently, tears running down her face as she stands frozen, and the cameras zoom in close to catch every glimmer of moisture on her cheeks.
District 2 is in trouble this year, Claudius realizes, only it’s not just about taking their children. It’s about having a tribute stand on stage crying like a little baby - like a Twelve or a Nine or a Six when they snap out of the stupor enough to realize what’s going on - and the cameras transmitting that image all over the country. This year District 2 will be weak and messy and bloody just like the rest of them, and whoever goes in next year will have to try extra hard to try to erase that legacy. Claudius hated people seeing him cry way more than he hated being smacked in the face, and he might not be carved from the mountains with a chisel of honour but he’ll bet for Two it’s very much the same.
He almost misses the name of the boy, his mind spinning and struggling to focus, but half a second later it slams into him like the shockwave from an explosion too far away to feel at the time of impact. “Claudius Beaumont!” the escort shouts, and there’s the cameras zooming and panning and searching for the stricken sacrifice, ready to put another crying boy on the three-storey screen.
What they get is Claudius, shocked and pale and laughing, unable to do anything else for a full five seconds before the spell breaks and he pulls himself forward. The crowd parts, the stage moves closer as his vision tunnels at the sides and everything whooshes around his ears, surreal and distant. The stairs recede in front of him and he almost stumbles but he catches himself, holds his head up and makes it to the top without tripping.
The crowd is still silent, the escort waiting with one hand extended, lavender and gold filigreed fingers curled in welcome, but Claudius ignores the hand and stalks over to his side of the stage. He’d imagined this a hundred times as a boy but of course he’d been taller, and more muscled, towering over the escort and his beautiful, statuesque district partner. He’d thrown up his hands and roared at the crowd and they’d roared right back, and everything was heady and amazing and if he dreamed it Claudius always woke up aching and choking back furious tears.
Now it’s nothing like that, hundreds of pairs of eyes staring at him while the silence thickens and rises like the shimmers of heat over the distant concrete. And this is District 2, this is a country where five out of six Volunteers lie dead in the dust but they step up anyway and never cry, never beg, never crack even under the worst pressure. Somewhere the Capitol is watching, the cameras hovering like invisible carrion vultures, lingering on the girl’s tears and her hitching breaths and waiting for Claudius to break down, too.
“My, don’t you look eager,” says the escort, and Claudius snaps his head around to look. “Are you excited for the honour?”
A lump sits in his throat and there are flutters in his chest because Claudius hasn’t trained for this, he’s never held a weapon bigger than a kitchen knife or a stick snatched up on the playground, he’s never killed a man, never done half the things he can’t even imagine because he doesn’t have the knowledge, let alone the skill. But Claudius has fought every day since he was four years old; he knows the crack of bone under his knuckle, the strangely smooth slide of dried blood on his fingertips. He knows pain and darkness and the cramping in his belly after days without food and no idea when more will come. He knows cold and loneliness and the complete loss of hope.
The odds are never in his favour. Chances are he’ll be dead in four weeks, but who cares? Either he dies in the Arena or he spends the rest of his life doing nothing but waiting to die later. As far as those odds go, Claudius will take them.
He steps up to the microphone, and he might not be eighteen and six feet tall but at least he doesn’t need to stand on tiptoes, so that’s something. “Oh yeah,” he says, and bares his teeth. “I can’t wait.”
Claudius ignores his district partner and throws one fist up in the air. For one long, painful second there’s silence - the thudding of his heart loud enough that the mic must be picking it up - but then, in a slow ripple, the crowd responds. It’s not the thunderous cheering of a normal year, people screaming and pounding their feet against the concrete, but Claudius shouts and pumps his arm and dares them to find their pride again. The clapping starts in scattered patches but then it grows like a flash rainstorm striking the roof, and the Seniors at the back stare up at him with jealousy and hatred on their faces but too damn bad.
When the escort pulls them away toward the Justice Building Claudius can hardly breathe. The door closes with a heavy bang, cutting off the chanting of DIS-trict 2! DIS-trict 2!, but while the words are too muffled to catch the rhythm remains.
Claudius laughs again and covers his face as they lead him through the marbled lobby. He’s going to die, but if nothing else the history books will talk about this Reaping for a very long time.
Claudius waits for the train in the nicest room he’s ever seen. Everything is smooth, dark wood or smooth, pale marble or smooth, mottled grey limestone, and the Peacekeepers leave him there alone and so Claudius spends a minute just touching things, running his hand over the walls and the columns. He sits down on the bench, and it’s hard and plain and not that comfortable but what’s amazing is that even though it’s wood it doesn’t squeak at all. Everything here is measured and precise and perfect, nothing cheap or slapdash about it.
It’s exactly the kind of style Gloria would kill herself to have and spent her life imitating, only anyone who knows quality could tell the difference in a second. Claudius hopes at least once she can see the inside of this building so she’ll know how a building looks when it has actual class. She’d probably puff up like a frog and explode from trying to take it all in while swallowing her own inadequacy.
Sooner than Claudius expected the door opens, only it’s not a Peacekeeper or his mentor, it’s Gloria, eyes red and face splotchy. Jeremy follows her, silent and grave as always, hanging behind her like a tall, blond shadow. “I don’t believe this,” Gloria bursts out when the door closes. “How could this happen? After everything we did to keep you safe and out of the Games, now this?”
Claudius frowns, but Gloria never makes sense when she’s in one of her ranting moods and he’s learned not to try. “I’m going to fight,” he tells her. “I’m not going to let them kill me. Finnick Odair was my age when he won, if he can do it then so can I.”
Finnick Odair won the first year Claudius was eligible for the Reaping, and if he hadn’t been a Four then Claudius would admire the ruthless way he tore through the Arena, including his supposed allies. Gloria pinches his nose. “Claudius,” she says in a way that makes him feel like something stuck to the bottom of her shoe, “Finnick Odair had more sponsors than anyone in the history of the Games. You don’t have any of that. What do you think you’re going to do?”
“Fight,” Claudius says again, forceful this time. “Outliers win one out of three years and they don’t have any training at all. I’m going to win and I’m going to come back.”
“And then what,” Gloria says, her voice screeching half-hysterical. “You expect us to pack up and go live in the Village with those monsters? You’re not like them - we’re not like them! We’re normal people, not murderers! I don’t want to hear you talking about how you’re going to kill to get out of there! I don’t want to think about what would come back!”
Everything rushes around Claudius again like he’s back in the square walking up toward the steps. “What do you want me to do, die? So I won’t embarrass you by killing anybody?” Claudius clenches his fists. “Being a Victor is an honour and I’m going to earn it! I’m not going to hide in a hole and wait for everybody else to die like I’m from Eleven!”
Gloria opens her mouth to speak, but surprise of surprises, Jeremy puts a hand on her shoulder. “Gloria,” he says, and his voice sounds thick, almost rusty, like he hasn’t used it in a long time. Claudius honestly can’t remember the last time he’s heard it. “Stop. Let the boy fight.”
She whirls on him, Claudius forgotten, because her anger is sharp and piercing but it’s not a bomb that explodes in all directions, it’s a gun that shoots one thing at a time. “You! Don’t tell me how to raise our son after all those years when you did nothing! Is it my fault I tried to keep him away from those people so he’d grow up decent? Is it my fault I don’t want him becoming a murderer and attaching that to our name? Is it my fault -“
“Gloria,” Jeremy says again, insistent. He almost raises his voice but backs off at the last second, and he flings up his hands as though to avoid a blow. “He’s been Reaped. Whatever happens is up to him now. It’s out of our hands.”
It’s a typical Jeremy comment, seeing as that’s how he’s treated everything about his son and the house and his wife’s rages for Claudius’ entire life, but today Claudius is willing to let it slide because it works in his favour. He takes a second to examine the walls again, tall and strong and proud, and soaks in some of the strength from the mountains just visible out the window behind him.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Claudius says, calling her that for the first time in years. “When I win, I won’t come back home. I won’t tell anyone who my parents are, and I’ll go right to the Village and you’ll never see me again. I’ll tell my mentor that you’re dead or something and you won’t have to be embarrassed.”
“What!” Gloria explodes, which is about what Claudius thought she might do. There’s no way to make her happy, not ever. “After all we did for you, you’re going to pretend you don’t even know us -“
Sometimes, Claudius thinks Gloria has some kind of parasite in her skull, sitting on her brain and nibbling little bits of it here and there, because nothing she says makes sense. But the Games are in a week and Claudius is less than a month away from fifteen and he’s going into the Hunger Games after all, twenty-three other kids who will try to kill him and at least four who actually could, and there’s no time for this. Not when Gloria’s words scrape his bones and make his skin itch and crawl into his mind to whisper and slide doubts between his thoughts.
Claudius backs away, puts his hands over his ears and hums the Panem Anthem. Gloria’s face turns even redder but Claudius only hums louder, humming and humming until the music fills his brain and he imagines the low rumble of the drums and the soaring strings and the march of the brass. He squeezes his eyes shut and pictures that music playing around him, rising higher and louder as he stands on the stage with the lights blaring in his eyes and a crown sitting heavy on his forehead.
A hand touches his, and Claudius jumps. Gloria and Jeremy have gone, and instead a Peacekeeper stands in front of him, face impassive behind the helmet. “Their time was up,” she says, and Claudius drops his hands. “You still have some time to wait, so you may as well take a seat.”
Claudius does, dropping onto the bench. He starts to swing his feet and scuff his heels against the floor like he does at school when the teachers send him to the office, only he freezes just before his shoes leave a mark because this isn’t school, this is the Justice Building, and Claudius isn’t here because he got in trouble. Instead he pulls his legs up under him to avoid temptation, leans back against the wall and waits.
The door opens again and Claudius snaps awake, embarrassed to be dozing on the more important day of his life so far, except that the room is so warm and the sunlight streamed through the window and he’d gotten sleepy watching the dust motes dance in the beam. He scrambles to his feet, shaking away the fuzziness, and that extra second to focus his attention means he doesn’t shriek like a startled baby when Lyme, Victor of the 55th Hunger Games, steps into the room.
Funny how a room that seemed so spacious a few minutes ago looks cramped and small when it has to fit all of Lyme inside. She’s the tallest person Claudius has ever seen, and Claudius is tall for fourteen but he still has to crane his neck to meet her eyes. She looks down at him, solemn and steady, and her blue-grey eyes hold Claudius still as she tilts her head and studies him. Claudius holds himself very still and prays that whatever she’s looking for, she finds it in him.
Finally her mouth quirks, just a little, and she steps back and folds her arms. “Let’s get to the train,” Lyme says. Even her voice gives Claudius the shivers, powerful and strong and most definitely a Victor’s voice. He doesn’t sound like that at all, though luckily he got over most of the cracking and squeaking last summer. “There will be cameras and crowds, and more people than you’ve probably seen packed together in your life. They’ll have cameras and the flashes will be going off in your face, but you can’t let that get to you. I need you to look calm and confident through all of it, can you do that?”
Claudius pulls himself up straight, squaring his shoulders. “Yes ma’am.”
“You might think it’s fine for you to slip a little because it’s only for a second but you can’t,” Lyme says. Her eyes narrow and Claudius feels the weight as though she’d settled both hands on his shoulders and pressed. “The cameras see everything. Once we go through those doors you can’t so much as twitch. Don’t smile, don’t wave, just think about whatever you had in your mind on stage that let you reach the crowd like you did. Understand?”
“Yes ma’am,” Claudius says again, and she nods. The acknowledgement sends a tiny thrill shooting through him, and he rides the wave of bravery before it fizzles. “Are you going to be my mentor?”
This time her mouth pulls to the side a little, reminding Claudius of when he used to catch himself biting his lip and try to stop it because that’s a baby gesture. It doesn’t look babyish when Lyme does it but it does make her seem worried, and of course she is. Normally she has tributes four years older with eleven more years of training, and they’re always sharp and athletic and pretty and now she has him. Of course she isn’t thrilled, but the Reaping can’t be changed and Claudius will never win if he lets himself think of everything stacked against him.
“Yeah,” Lyme says finally. “Follow me, and remember, even if they get close, I won’t let them touch you, so don’t flinch.”
Claudius says “Yes ma’am” again, and that’s three times without a hint of irony and he didn’t even have to think about it. When Lyme talks the whole world stops to listen, and Claudius knows deep down into the centre of himself that whatever she asks, he’ll die trying to do it for her. Mentors are the most important person in a tribute’s life, so say the commentaries, and less than five minutes in Claudius can see why.
He might have done the same if Brutus or Callista or Artemisia walked through the door and demanded his attention but they didn’t, and now Lyme is his mentor and Claudius has to trust her or he’ll die. If nothing else, he’s always been good at surviving.
She is right about the crowds and the cameras, and if Lyme hadn’t warned him Claudius might have flung his hands in front of his eyes to protect himself. It’s the middle of the morning, the sun shining bright and hot over the rooftops, but the cameras are blinding anyway, and the sunlight reflects from the metal casings and dances in his eyes and it takes all of Claudius’ willpower not to squint.
His district partner, Marietta, doesn’t manage quite so well, and while she’s stopped crying and wiped her face, she still holds herself with her shoulders too high and her head off to one side. Emory stands behind her, one hand on her shoulder, and she’s not quite as tall or broad as Lyme but she’s still very Two, big and solid like the quarries. She won the year Claudius was born, and she might not be his favourite but he’s not going to sneer at her presence, definitely not.
Lyme told him not to smile and so he doesn’t, but he basks in the warm feeling of being here, flanked by two of the most powerful Victors in Panem, of being able to leave his stupid home and his stupid family and his stupid life and actually do something. He keeps his mouth straight but he lets it fill his eyes, feels them crinkle and tighten and his gaze sharpen. He keeps his head up, and he looks as many cameras straight on as he can, pretending he knows all their secrets and they’d better be nice to him if they don’t want him telling everyone.
At last they make it to the train, and Claudius climbs the steps and stands inside the carriage door with Lyme at his side as Emory and Marietta take the other end. “Salute,” Lyme says in a low voice, raising her fist to her chest, and Claudius does the same. The train lurches side to side a few inches as the engine hisses, then the whole thing surges forward and Claudius digs his feet down into the floor to ground himself so he doesn’t wobble or fall over. People flash past in a sea of colour, skin and clothes and cameras, until finally the train curves around the bend and the square disappears from view.
“Now we can relax a little,” Lyme says, and she drops a hand to rest on Claudius’ head for a brief moment. “Come inside and we’ll get you something to eat before we start preparations.”
Claudius promised himself he wouldn’t gawk in the Capitol like some outer-quarry hick miner, but he didn’t expect the train to be so stunning. His feet sink in the plush carpet, and the walls are made of a rich, red wood that Claudius can’t identify but knows is not from Two. Heavy crystal chandeliers dangle from the ceiling, waving gently and tinkling with the motion of the train, and the prisms catch the light and throw tiny rainbow slivers all around the room. Claudius lifts his hand so one of the rainbows lands on his hand, and he laughs and closes his fingers even though he knows you can’t actually hold light.
He looks up to see Lyme watching him, and Claudius flushes and drops his arm. “I won’t stare in the Capitol,” he says. “I know Careers aren’t supposed to be impressed by anything.”
Lyme lets out a quiet snort. “The train is fine,” she reassures him. “No cameras here. Get it out of your system now and you can be as unimpressed as you need to be when you get there.”
There’s no reason at all for the trains to be this fancy when they’re only used a handful of times per year; these are the tribute trains, not passenger lines. Claudius asked a bored Peacekeeper once, and she told him that only tributes and Victors and mentors get to ride them, and of course the staff. When Claudius asked how much it cost to maintain a train like that, she shook her head and told him to move along. Claudius learned years ago that adults say things like that when they don’t know or don’t want to say the answer.
Here, though, standing and staring up at the light fixtures and the plush fabric on the seats that Claudius has never even seen before, something occurs to him. “Do they do this so we don’t stare so much?” Claudius asks. He runs his hand over the dark purple material, watching in fascination as the colour shifts back and forth as he swipes his hand in different directions. “So we can get used to it, I mean, like you said.”
Lyme gives him a studying look that’s almost sharp, but not quite. “I hadn’t really thought about it,” she says. She sits down on one of the benches, and it’s not exactly funny but it almost is, how she looks out of place and entirely comfortable at the same time. Nothing about Lyme matches this ridiculous fluffy-sparkly carriage, everything shiny and exaggerated and unnecessary, but at the same time she doesn’t look out of place. She sits back, legs spread and feet firmly planted, and she folds her arms loosely in a way that doesn’t make her look like she’s trying to hide, like Jeremy sometimes did.
Claudius bets Lyme could look at home anywhere, if only because she’d glare at anyone who said she didn’t belong. Cropped hair, muscled arms, a crisp suit, and that too clashes with the feathery flowers in the vases on the curlicued drinks cart. She should look ridiculous but she doesn’t, except that anyone else trying to do what she’s doing absolutely would. However she does what she does, Claudius needs to learn how.
She’s watching him, the way the Program recruiters used to watch him when they came to school but Claudius wasn’t allowed to take their brochures home. Like she’s waiting for him to do something interesting and can’t decide if he’s going to disappoint her or not. Claudius has a lot of experience with disappointment, and he recognizes the tension in the air, but this isn’t trying to behave in school or listen to Mom or do his homework without complaining. This is the Hunger Games, and every minute counts.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” Claudius says. You don’t have to join the Program to know that tributes listen to their mentors or they die, even in the outlying districts. One year a girl ignored her mentor’s advice to ally with a boy from another district, and she died the first night because she fell asleep with no one to watch her back. “I’m - I didn’t train but I know how to fight, and I’m not afraid. Of anything.”
“Of anything,” Lyme says, raising an eyebrow, and Claudius immediately gives himself a good mental kick. He’s fourteen and hasn’t seen anything more threatening than schoolyard bullies and Mom locking him in the pantry, and even with just that he’s already lying. He fights back memories of sobbing in the dark and squeezing himself into a ball to hide from the stinking puddle on the floor, feeling his ears turn red. “Well, that’s a good start. You want to tell me why you never joined the Program? The Centre files don’t have anything on you, so I’m a bit surprised.”
Claudius sits up straight. “Files?”
“Yeah.” Lyme taps her fingers against her knee. “Who applies, who gets in, their scores, how far they go. If you like fighting I would’ve thought you at least did a few years. The way you were onstage, I definitely pegged you for having gone through Transition.”
“That can’t be right,” Claudius protests. “If they keep records of anyone who applies, they should have me there.” The memories surface again, and the old injustice burns like an infection. “My mom applied for me, back when I was seven. The Centre didn’t want me, they said I didn’t sound like I’d take orders.”
Lyme pauses, and Claudius watches a few different thoughts flit over her face, pulling at her mouth, her eyebrows, the twitching muscle at the corner of her eye. “I hate to tell you, kid,” Lyme says slowly, “but I think your mom lied.”
“But -“ Claudius starts to protest, to argue and tell her no, no that can’t be right, why would she do that - except that Lyme’s mouth goes hard even as her eyes soften, and right then Lyme might not have ever mentioned parents on television but Claudius knows exactly the kind she had. He sucks in a breath, imagines the rage filling up his mouth like blood and then swallows an air bubble and forces it down, feeling the anger pop somewhere halfway between his throat and his stomach.
“Okay,” Claudius says instead. His fingers itch, and there’s so much to break in this train car, so many sharp things to throw and glasses to smash, but no, he is not a baby, and he has control. He has to. All those years Mom lied to him, all the time she used the Program to get him to listen, she’d lied to him all along, but it doesn’t matter. He’s here, Centre or no Centre, and nothing she can do about it. Claudius raises his head. “Tell me what to do.”