Birthday Prompts Round 1: seta_suzume, anonymous & kawuli
I'll be posting these in batches as I go, rather than one at a time or waiting until I go through them all. I figure this is a good compromise. Thanks for the well wishes, everyone! I had a very chill birthday. Also I have blue hair, because that's what everyone should do when they hit their mid-thirties!
for
seta_suzume: "Something where Dash interacts with any of the D4 victors"
It’s cute, really, watching the rebels from Two interact with Lyme and the other victors.
Selene likes to talk big about how working as a Scout tarnishes the whole Victor mystique, but even amongst the squad there’s a healthy level of respect and deference that never quite goes away. They do kid around with Claudius, and Selene spends half her time teasing him the same as she does Dash, but that’s because they’re fledgling squadmates now; they earned that by fighting and bleeding together on the battlefield. Selene would squawk and punch him for ever saying it out loud, but Dash has seen the awed light in her eyes whenever she’s around Enobaria, the way she stands a little straighter if Callista passes them in the corridor.
For the other District 2 rebels who didn’t have to memorize exhaustive files on their Victors’ personal lives, getting to see their heroes up close is almost worth the price of turning traitor. Dash sees them whisper to each other, the side conversations and frantic attempts at performative coolness whenever a Victor turns up unexpectedly at the commissary. He’s even caught a few of them attempting to map out a particular Victor’s schedule in a vain effort to avoid running into them, because meeting heroes in person and having them turn into real, fallible human beings is never as good as the mythical versions they keep inside their heads.
Dash doesn’t make fun, even if he does tease Selene about her Enobaria thing because they’re partners and that means they’re contractually obligated, because he understands it’s important, and he’s been around Twos enough to know. But he doesn’t get it, not really, and if the others think it’s because he’s from Four and they aren’t his heroes, Dash doesn’t bother to correct them. Rigel asks once, after the rescue, if Dash would like a rotation on the safe house where they’re keeping his Victors, but he says no, and Rigel doesn’t push it. He appreciates that.
They’re right in a way. It is because he’s Four - just not the way they think. It’s not because they aren’t his heroes, or because Four doesn’t appreciate their own. It’s because, like glass floats in a fishing net, the Victors have been a part of Dash’s life since he was ten.
District 2 keeps their Victors on a mountain, high above the people in a forest and behind an enormous wall, cut off and isolated from everyday life, descending only now and then on special occasions so their appearance is like gods choosing to land among their subjects. In Four, the Victors’ Village connects to the beach off the main part of town, putting them at the centre of the community - and nearly all the victors have a hand in training the children who come to Mags’ after-school Athletics Club.
There’s no Victor mystique in Four because the Victors are a part of the community - because the Victors built the community - because they’re out there mending fishing nets and feeding people and patching kids’ skinned knees and drinking at local bars and teasing teenagers about their first crushes. No one worries about whether meeting them and seeing them as people will rub the sheen off because everyone who lives near the main city already knows them for who they are.
Not that the Victors told the people everything, of course. Finnick certainly didn’t tell them the truth about the Capitol parties and the lovers splashed across the entertainment news, which followed him home to quiet disapproval from the more traditional set. And while he hadn’t thought about it as a kid or even as a teenager, training actively in combat skills he knew would take him to the Arena, as a Scout Dash knew that the friendly, non-threatening persona would have been just that, as carefully crafted as that of the Twos, if not as meticulously planned for them by a panel of trained image consultants.
Not that any of that occurred to Dash the day he met Odysseus.
The storm that took his parents had come swift, they told him. He mustn’t be angry, or think that they had been reckless, going out on the water so late. They knew how to handle the boat, and by all accounts they should have had time to make it back before it hit. But the squall blew in fast, and only a handful of sailors out on the water made it home. Dash had been asleep in bed when it happened. He woke up to strangers in the house, to men with serious faces squeezing his shoulders and women pulling him in for hugs, to his grandda sitting on his favourite wicker chair with his hands between his knees and his head bowed.
Dash didn’t understand, not really. He was old enough to know about death, that when people knelt down in front of him with their very serious faces and told him his parents would not be coming back he felt a strange, almost savage twist of anger and wished they’d just say it, but it didn’t sink in, not at first. His parents had died, and he knew what that meant. He knew what drowning meant. He could even - once they’d brought the bodies ashore and cleaned them up for the funeral - look at the silent, pale figures lying on the bier and connect them to the vibrant, loving people who had raised him.
But forever is a long time for a kid, and for a long time when Dash tried to picture the future - in that little-kid way, where his adult self still looked like his nine-year-old self, just taller and wearing grownup clothes - he still saw them there, proud and happy. Until Dash woke up on the morning of his tenth birthday to silence instead of his parents bending over the bed, and it hit him that this would happen on his eleventh birthday, and his twelfth, and his thirteenth, and every single birthday for the rest of his life.
Panic slammed into him like a wave, but Grandda was asleep in the next room and Dash didn’t want to wake him with anything so babyish as crying, not when he’d been working so hard to take care of him. Dash scrambled out of bed and pulled on his clothes, and he crept out of the house before running down the streets and out to the beach. The sun was just rising, the first glow of pink over the grey horizon, and Dash flung himself onto the sand, gasping into his knees.
He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t cry the day they told him, didn’t cry the day of the funeral, too shocked at the sight of his parents lying there in front of him, pale and still. Everyone had milled around him and called him brave, patting him on the shoulder or fussing with his hair or the collar of his shirt, and Dash hadn’t known how to explain that it wasn’t brave, he just hadn’t felt anything but a wide, scary hole inside him. But the tears burst out of him now, hard and rushing like a tidal wave, and Dash buried his face in his arms and sobbed until his body shook and he felt the pressure in his throat that made him want to throw up.
“Here,” said a voice, and a broad hand passed him a handkerchief bigger than his face.
Dash startled, looked up to see Odysseus crouched next to him. Everyone knew Odysseus, the Victor with the biggest family of all of them, as much a part of the community as Mags. “I’m okay,” he said. He sounded snuffly even to himself.
“I won the Games, kiddo, I have more of them at home,” Odysseus said, with a wry humour that reminded Dash of his grandda, and so he took the handkerchief and wiped his nose but not his eyes, not yet. Not with the tears still leaking. Odysseus lowered himself onto the sand next to Dash, looking out over the sea with its pink-tinged hue. “It hits you at odd times,” he said. “You’ll be fine for weeks, months, even, and then it’ll be a word, or a smell, or some little thing you pick up, and it all comes back. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just how it is.”
Dash scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s my birthday today.”
Odysseus makes an ‘ah’ sort of face. “That’ll do it, yeah. I’m sorry to hear that, kid, I know it’s hard.”
He didn’t mean to make a face, really he didn’t, but - Odysseus was a big man, with a big family, and he won the Games and his house always had tons of people around it and food frying and smelled like conch fritters most of the time. Dash knew adults liked to say that because it made them feel better and they thought it helped, but he really wished they wouldn’t.
“I mean because I’m an orphan,” Odysseus said, and Dash startled. “You’re too young to know the story, I suppose, but it’s not a secret. My Ma adopted and raised me after my parents died.”
“Oh,” Dash said. The glow in the sky brightened, a pink and gold band over the water as the rest turned a pale blue. He scrubbed at his face and took a breath. “Was it hard?”
“Yeah, it was hard,” Odysseus said, and Dash actually swallowed a laugh. Nobody had ever said that to him. They said he was brave, or strong, but it’s like admitting this was hard went against some kind of rule. “But I had people taking care of me, and even though sometimes I felt alone when I was sad, I never was, not really. That’s what it’ll be like for you.”
Dash looked down at the handkerchief, pale blue with navy stitching around the edges. “It hurts,” he said. “And everyone keeps telling me I’m brave, and I want to be, but sometimes I don’t know what that means. I don’t think it means not crying when something bad happens.”
Odysseus gave him a sharp look sideways, kind of like he was trying to read a book over Dash’s shoulder without him knowing. “I think you’re right,” he said. “But for right now, you’re probably going to have a lot of feelings and not a lot of places to put them. If you wanted to stop by the Athletics Club after school, it might help.”
Dash sat back, eyes wide. “Isn’t that for special kids?”
“Who says you’re not?” Odysseus rests a hand on his shoulder, warm and reassuring. “Some of the older kids are there to train for more serious things, but you don’t have to. You can just come and have somewhere to go, something to do so you don’t feel so lost and confused, and people who’ll help you when you’re feeling that way. Blood isn’t the only family you’ll have, Dash. Now’s as good a time as any to learn that.”
A strange drumroll started up in Dash’s chest as the first glint of the sun appeared over the top of the sea, a sharp sliver of gold. “Maybe I will.”
Odysseus smiled, and he reached up to ruffle Dash’s hair. “Mags will be glad to hear it,” he said. “We’ll be looking for you.”
By the time Dash stood at his first Reaping, he understood what it all meant. He’d seen snatches on TV, the blood and the bodies and the beautiful boys and girls shining on stage who didn’t come home. He knew what Odysseus meant, then, when he said Dash didn’t have to mean it, that he could come to the Athletics Club and train as a way to make himself stronger, fight the fear and find a family - and he also knew he wouldn’t. That day on the beach Odysseus took a young boy feeling alone and terrified and made him feel safe and loved, and Dash knew exactly how to pay that back.
In the end, Dash didn’t have to volunteer, and Odysseus died under torture in the Capitol. He was Mags’ second in command in rebellion planning, a Victor who never wanted to volunteer but did so anyway because his family had bad odds and he’d rather it be him than one of his adoptive brothers or sisters. The Capitol killed him because he didn’t give them what they wanted, and Dash should be proud - and he is, somewhere, in that part of himself where district pride still means something - but mostly he just feels hollow.
Much later he returns to Four, Selene’s idea, and spends the day with his grandda, surrounded by kids and cousins and former classmates from the Athletics Club, and it’s good, it’s healing. He doesn’t go see the Victors because that feels weird, plus it’s different now with the mix of districts in the village. But he does take a wander down the beach, and he pauses at the house on the water where Odysseus lived. His family’s home, laughter and music filtering out through the windows, and Dash takes a second to soak that in, the sounds of life even with the man’s giant presence gone.
“Good man, that one,” Grandda says, following Dash’s gaze. “He asked after you while you were gone, sure you’d do great things. He’d be glad you brought the others home.”
Dash smiles, though his eyes burn from the salt spray and he has to drag a hand across his face. “Thanks, grandda, we tried.”
Grandda grips Dash’s hand, strong even after all these years. “You’re a good boy, Dash. He’d be proud, and so am I. Mags too.”
A laugh escapes Dash at that, and he wipes his eyes and runs a hand through his hair. “That’s not exactly hard.”
“Maybe not, but it sure meant something if she wasn’t,” Grandda says, grinning. “Now come on, we’d better get back if we want to eat them conch fritters before the last afternoon train.”
“Conch fritters!” Dash presses a hand to his chest in dramatic approval. “You’re spoiling me!”
“Can’t spoil the good ones,” Grandda says, smiling. “Besides, they’d never let me hear the end of it if I let you go home without.”
Dash takes one last look at the village as the waves lap at his feet, then turns and heads back into town.
for anon: "mentor feels with Nero and Lyme"
It feels absolutely surreal to be standing back in the Village basketball court with a ball in her hands, making free throws at the empty net, but after everything that happened - the Quarter Quell, the war, the reconstruction efforts - Lyme finds comfort in the normalcy of pebbled rubble beneath her fingertips and the sharp ting of the ball against the concrete.
Normally she’d face off against Brutus or Claudius for a game of one-on-one, but Brutus has his hands full with Petra and Claudius is off on a supply run, and Lyme needed the air more than she needed the companionship. Her aim is off after so long away, and she plays a backing track of typical Brutus smack-talk in her head as the ball pings off the rim and flies out of bounds.
Nero catches it, tosses it back. “Hey,” he says. “Got room for another?”
Lyme’s chest tightens. They used to play more when she was younger, and she remembers the sharp buzz of competition, her own sharp laughter as she fouled him constantly, slamming her shoulder into his broad chest, the growls of frustration when it didn’t matter because she could fling herself directly at him and his solid bulk would stay calmly in place. She tries to picture that now, the rivalry and opposition, and a flare of panic spikes.
“I’m not really in the mood,” she says, trying for casual, but Nero’s eyes flicker and she knows she failed. “You can be my ball boy, though.”
“Can do,” Nero says, giving her a salute.
They say nothing for a while, Lyme shooting and Nero throwing the ball back to her. And it’s fine, they aired things out after Lyme got back and he doesn’t blame her, he said so, everything’s fine, and if the thought of playing against him fills Lyme with a sharp, unknowable dread, what does that matter? She lived through a war, maybe she’s had enough of going up against anyone for a lifetime. Nobody would question her if that were true.
Finally, though, Nero catches the ball as it angles off the backboard but doesn’t toss it back, instead shifting it awkwardly in his hands. “Hey, look,” he says. “About that propo they made me do way back …”
A knife trails down Lyme’s back, tracing the outline of her spine. She holds herself still, hands at her sides. “Oh, that?” she says, all casual. “It’s fine. We all had to do things. Say things, whatever. They had Enobaria. I get it.”
Nero’s mouth presses thin, and he twists the basketball in toward his chest. “No, you don’t. They wanted me or Misha and I chose me because I was afraid she’d have a harder time taking it back. And it was either Bari or you, and I chose Bari, which is what I always do. And then you came back and I was so worried about making sure you knew I didn’t blame you for leaving, that you didn’t think you had to apologize or anything, I didn’t actually make things right.”
It hits her harder than she thought it would, like the ground shifted under her but at the same time she falls up instead of down. “You don’t have to. I’m the one who left.”
“Yeah, and I know what I said, and I knew they’d make sure you heard it,” Nero said, implacable, as the hitch grew in Lyme’s throat. “I should have said it then, I should’ve asked you to forgive me for what I said to you - about you.”
It hurts to breathe. To blink. The air finds her lungs in ragged gulps. “You don’t have to,” Lyme says again, like a child. (She’s almost forty, this is ridiculous, she doesn’t need - she wants -) “I don’t blame you, I was gone and they had Enobaria in custody, you made the choice any mentor would have made -”
Nero sets the ball down, slow and deliberate, and crosses the court to stand in front of her. “You didn’t deserve that,” he says. He rests one hand on her shoulder, and when Lyme doesn’t jerk away (she sucks in a breath, opens her eyes wide against the prickle behind her lids) he brings the other up to join its opposite. “You aren’t a traitor. You never were. You were brave, and you did what was right, and I don’t care about the reasons, I’m sorry I used our relationship against you. I’m ashamed anyone else heard it. And I’m gonna make damned sure I never, never gonna choose between you and anything else, ever again. Will you forgive me?”
“Fuck you,” Lyme bursts out, swiping a hand across her eyes. “The war is over. I thought I was done with all this feelings bullshit, and here you go dragging all this up again?”
Nero wipes her cheek with his thumb, the gesture so forgotten yet so familiar that Lyme nearly breaks. “One more, baby girl, that’s all,” he says, gentle and immovable as the distant mountains. “I want you to forgive me, but that means you gotta feel like you deserve to be asked. If you’re still carrying around all that traitor bullshit, if you still feel like you’re lucky we allow you to be here, that’s part of what I’m doing right now. Let that go.”
Her head reels, but Nero’s hands on her shoulders keep her steady. “What is this, absolution?” Lyme asks, but the sarcasm she aimed for comes out sideways, twists dangerously into desperation.
“You and me both, sweetheart,” Nero says. “You deserve to be here. What do you say?”
Lyme hasn’t seen the inside of an Arena for twenty-five years, but something inside her unspools at the old catchphrase. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “I forgive you.” It sounds strange, so stilted and artificial, but then Nero smiles and she hardly cares. “But I’m not going to say the other thing because I’m not a fucking eighteen-year-old, so don’t try me.”
Nero grins, teeth sharp. “I could still wrestle you to the ground, little girl, are you sure you want to test that out?”
“Ha!” Lyme dodges behind him and grabs the ball from where rolled onto the grass. “How about first to five?”
“You’re on,” Nero says, moving to guard in front of her, and Lyme grins and takes her shot.
for
kawuli: "Alec/Jake things"
“I think you can chill, I told you they’d like you.”
The train rumbles down the repaired tracks, and Alec flashes a mock-glare at his boyfriend before turning his gaze back to the window and trying to count the buildings that flash past. The old reflex to run through the death list feels distasteful now, and would probably qualify as an act of treason under the new regime. “I’m not sure if you’ve met me, but I’m not exactly chill,” Alec says. “I’m pretty sure I was the first toddler with anxiety.”
Jake rolls his eyes, and he rubs his thumb over Alec’s, their fingers tangled and hands resting between them. Alec is still getting used to that part, the casual affection like it’s no big deal. “You know what I mean. They loved you, I’ve never seen my dad get like that about anyone since … honestly, I can’t remember the last time. I half thought he was gonna propose to you or something. Which is exactly what I said would happen, you’re like, the parody of the perfect boyfriend everyone’s parents want their kid to bring home.”
Alec makes a face. “Okay, come on -”
“You think I’m kidding?” Jake nudges him in the shoulder. “You’re polite and respectful, you’re handsome but in a clean-cut way, not a threatening way, and that whole District 2 Peacekeeper’s son thing means you know how to talk to parents so all the hackles come right off. Plus you’re a doctor, which has only been a problem for exactly two people in the history of ever.”
Alec snorts at that. It was never about his becoming a doctor, he knows that now, but the memory of his teenaged outrage still simmers dark below the surface. “You’re not a bad catch yourself either, if I had a normal family to bring you home to they’d love you too.”
“Oh no, we are not making this about my self-esteem.” Jake narrows his eyes. “My point is that my parents were always going to love you, but I also had another point, which is that you obviously didn’t believe me.”
The urge to drum his fingers twitches through his hand. Alec exhales and curls his toes instead to try to dispel the impulse. “I believed you.”
“Did you, though?” Jake taps the fingers of his free hand against his leg - no childhood scoldings against fidgeting in his household, or if so, he consciously decided not to care - and lets out a frustrated breath. “Okay, look. My parents went crazy over you, but the thing is … I’m not exactly sure who it is they met.”
Alec freezes.
“You know, I know you were a Career, you told me, you did the Peacekeeper thing for a while and I know what that means,” Jake says. “And I killed people in the war, probably more than you, even, so I figured it wasn’t that weird in the end. This is the first time I’ve ever really seen it and thought, wow, okay, yeah, this is the Program you don’t talk about. You became a different person in there.”
Alec swallows. He wants to twist his hands together - sit on them, splay them on his knees to stop from twisting them together - but Jake still holds his right in his, and so he curls his left into a fist and digs his thumbnail into the side of his finger. “It wasn’t - it’s not like that. It’s just a thing I do when I’m nervous.”
Jake glances at him, and he’s serious but not angry so that’s something. “Babe, I’m not saying you aren’t charming and intelligent or whatever, but this was like watching you put on a mask. And I mean that literally, okay, I saw the exact minute it happened. We were outside the door and you closed your eyes and counted to five and when you opened them you … changed. You looked like those kids on stage.”
“My brother,” Alec says, letting his eyes fall shut. “You mean I looked like my brother.”
He hears Jake’s intake of breath. “Shit, no, that’s not -”
“No, that’s what I mean, I based my persona off my brother,” Alec says. He keeps his eyes closed because it’s easier that way, leaves their joined hands and the jostling of the train beneath him as his grounding points. “Everybody loved Creed, he was charming and funny and witty without being too smooth, all the adults went crazy for him. I never knew what to do with myself in the Centre, so whenever I wasn’t sure, I always thought, what would Creed do? Your persona is yourself with an edge, you know, a little sharper, a little harder, like you without the edges filed off, but I wasn’t … I’m not like that, I was never meant to be there. I could never find myself, and the more I tried the more I fumbled. So I used Creed instead. It was easy. And now when I have to charm people, like for fundraising for the hospital, stuff like that, it’s easier to fall back on old habits.”
A low exhale, the sound of Jake pushing a hand through his hair. “Okay, but these aren’t donors at some fundraising gala, these are my parents. I know I don’t always get along with them, but the reasons I didn’t are pretty much all the reasons why they’d love you.”
The laugh escapes Alec like the snap of bone, and he feels Jake wince. His parents chose loyalty to the Peacekeepers over their district; if Jake had to date a man, the son of a decorated second-twenty couple had been the best they could hope for. Alec decided not to bring up the awkward semi-estrangement issue. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Jake says. “I just meant … they’re my parents. You didn’t have to go into your head like it was some weird Centre test. Wouldn’t have brought you if I knew it was gonna stress you out that bad.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Alec says, suddenly tired. “Or - I mean, I did, but it’s not like I made a conscious plan ahead of time not to be myself when I met them. But it’s important, they’re your parents and I wanted to make a good impression, and we got there and I started getting nervous, and I don’t have a great track record with loyalists, so I did what I thought might help.” He rubs a hand across his forehead. “And it did work, so there’s that?”
Jake sighs. “Babe, did you ever think that your brother was eighteen when he died?”
Alec sits up straight, a flash of shock and anger splashing over him. “What?”
“I mean, have you met any eighteen-year-olds lately?” Jake turns in his seat, and he takes Alec’s hand in both of his and regards him seriously. “I’m not dissing your brother, okay, you loved him and if he were alive I’m sure we would get along great, but he was a teenager, and then he died. You were his little brother, and you felt like you couldn’t ever measure up, and then he died a hero and you made him into this mythical thing in your head. I’m glad it helped you, babe, but you’re older than he ever got to be. When you’re charming people now, it’s not your brother they’re falling for, it’s you.” He grimaced a little, his expression one of mild theatrics. “A weird, Career-mode version of you, maybe, but still you. Give yourself some credit, huh?”
Alec lets out a long breath. “I’m going to need to think about that one for a while.”
“That’s fine,” Jake says, and he leans up to kiss Alec right there on the train, though he keeps it short. Alec might not care about facing disapproval over having a boyfriend anymore, but he wouldn’t make out with a hypothetical girl in public, either. Some things are just polite. “Next time maybe we can try again with normal-Alec, because you didn’t do any kind of weird performance with me, and I like you just fine.”
Alec grins at him a little, the bands around his chest unclenching a little. “Yeah, but you also hit on me while you were bleeding to death, apparently, so unless your parents think I’m super sexy -”
“Ohhh my god,” Jake groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Never mind. Go back to being shy, because if you get along with my parents then you’ll have to meet my sister, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
“Love you too,” Alec says, and kisses Jake’s fingers while he grumbles. There’s still a lot to think about - about Creed, eternally eighteen, his memory slowly taking on the sheen of legend, about Alec and his need to protect himself through the relic of a totalitarian murder regime he still finds comforting - but for now he looks out the window and watches a flock of birds take flight from along a telephone wire, their wings black against the cobalt sky.
for
seta_suzume: "Something where Dash interacts with any of the D4 victors"
It’s cute, really, watching the rebels from Two interact with Lyme and the other victors.
Selene likes to talk big about how working as a Scout tarnishes the whole Victor mystique, but even amongst the squad there’s a healthy level of respect and deference that never quite goes away. They do kid around with Claudius, and Selene spends half her time teasing him the same as she does Dash, but that’s because they’re fledgling squadmates now; they earned that by fighting and bleeding together on the battlefield. Selene would squawk and punch him for ever saying it out loud, but Dash has seen the awed light in her eyes whenever she’s around Enobaria, the way she stands a little straighter if Callista passes them in the corridor.
For the other District 2 rebels who didn’t have to memorize exhaustive files on their Victors’ personal lives, getting to see their heroes up close is almost worth the price of turning traitor. Dash sees them whisper to each other, the side conversations and frantic attempts at performative coolness whenever a Victor turns up unexpectedly at the commissary. He’s even caught a few of them attempting to map out a particular Victor’s schedule in a vain effort to avoid running into them, because meeting heroes in person and having them turn into real, fallible human beings is never as good as the mythical versions they keep inside their heads.
Dash doesn’t make fun, even if he does tease Selene about her Enobaria thing because they’re partners and that means they’re contractually obligated, because he understands it’s important, and he’s been around Twos enough to know. But he doesn’t get it, not really, and if the others think it’s because he’s from Four and they aren’t his heroes, Dash doesn’t bother to correct them. Rigel asks once, after the rescue, if Dash would like a rotation on the safe house where they’re keeping his Victors, but he says no, and Rigel doesn’t push it. He appreciates that.
They’re right in a way. It is because he’s Four - just not the way they think. It’s not because they aren’t his heroes, or because Four doesn’t appreciate their own. It’s because, like glass floats in a fishing net, the Victors have been a part of Dash’s life since he was ten.
District 2 keeps their Victors on a mountain, high above the people in a forest and behind an enormous wall, cut off and isolated from everyday life, descending only now and then on special occasions so their appearance is like gods choosing to land among their subjects. In Four, the Victors’ Village connects to the beach off the main part of town, putting them at the centre of the community - and nearly all the victors have a hand in training the children who come to Mags’ after-school Athletics Club.
There’s no Victor mystique in Four because the Victors are a part of the community - because the Victors built the community - because they’re out there mending fishing nets and feeding people and patching kids’ skinned knees and drinking at local bars and teasing teenagers about their first crushes. No one worries about whether meeting them and seeing them as people will rub the sheen off because everyone who lives near the main city already knows them for who they are.
Not that the Victors told the people everything, of course. Finnick certainly didn’t tell them the truth about the Capitol parties and the lovers splashed across the entertainment news, which followed him home to quiet disapproval from the more traditional set. And while he hadn’t thought about it as a kid or even as a teenager, training actively in combat skills he knew would take him to the Arena, as a Scout Dash knew that the friendly, non-threatening persona would have been just that, as carefully crafted as that of the Twos, if not as meticulously planned for them by a panel of trained image consultants.
Not that any of that occurred to Dash the day he met Odysseus.
The storm that took his parents had come swift, they told him. He mustn’t be angry, or think that they had been reckless, going out on the water so late. They knew how to handle the boat, and by all accounts they should have had time to make it back before it hit. But the squall blew in fast, and only a handful of sailors out on the water made it home. Dash had been asleep in bed when it happened. He woke up to strangers in the house, to men with serious faces squeezing his shoulders and women pulling him in for hugs, to his grandda sitting on his favourite wicker chair with his hands between his knees and his head bowed.
Dash didn’t understand, not really. He was old enough to know about death, that when people knelt down in front of him with their very serious faces and told him his parents would not be coming back he felt a strange, almost savage twist of anger and wished they’d just say it, but it didn’t sink in, not at first. His parents had died, and he knew what that meant. He knew what drowning meant. He could even - once they’d brought the bodies ashore and cleaned them up for the funeral - look at the silent, pale figures lying on the bier and connect them to the vibrant, loving people who had raised him.
But forever is a long time for a kid, and for a long time when Dash tried to picture the future - in that little-kid way, where his adult self still looked like his nine-year-old self, just taller and wearing grownup clothes - he still saw them there, proud and happy. Until Dash woke up on the morning of his tenth birthday to silence instead of his parents bending over the bed, and it hit him that this would happen on his eleventh birthday, and his twelfth, and his thirteenth, and every single birthday for the rest of his life.
Panic slammed into him like a wave, but Grandda was asleep in the next room and Dash didn’t want to wake him with anything so babyish as crying, not when he’d been working so hard to take care of him. Dash scrambled out of bed and pulled on his clothes, and he crept out of the house before running down the streets and out to the beach. The sun was just rising, the first glow of pink over the grey horizon, and Dash flung himself onto the sand, gasping into his knees.
He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t cry the day they told him, didn’t cry the day of the funeral, too shocked at the sight of his parents lying there in front of him, pale and still. Everyone had milled around him and called him brave, patting him on the shoulder or fussing with his hair or the collar of his shirt, and Dash hadn’t known how to explain that it wasn’t brave, he just hadn’t felt anything but a wide, scary hole inside him. But the tears burst out of him now, hard and rushing like a tidal wave, and Dash buried his face in his arms and sobbed until his body shook and he felt the pressure in his throat that made him want to throw up.
“Here,” said a voice, and a broad hand passed him a handkerchief bigger than his face.
Dash startled, looked up to see Odysseus crouched next to him. Everyone knew Odysseus, the Victor with the biggest family of all of them, as much a part of the community as Mags. “I’m okay,” he said. He sounded snuffly even to himself.
“I won the Games, kiddo, I have more of them at home,” Odysseus said, with a wry humour that reminded Dash of his grandda, and so he took the handkerchief and wiped his nose but not his eyes, not yet. Not with the tears still leaking. Odysseus lowered himself onto the sand next to Dash, looking out over the sea with its pink-tinged hue. “It hits you at odd times,” he said. “You’ll be fine for weeks, months, even, and then it’ll be a word, or a smell, or some little thing you pick up, and it all comes back. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just how it is.”
Dash scrubbed a hand over his face. “It’s my birthday today.”
Odysseus makes an ‘ah’ sort of face. “That’ll do it, yeah. I’m sorry to hear that, kid, I know it’s hard.”
He didn’t mean to make a face, really he didn’t, but - Odysseus was a big man, with a big family, and he won the Games and his house always had tons of people around it and food frying and smelled like conch fritters most of the time. Dash knew adults liked to say that because it made them feel better and they thought it helped, but he really wished they wouldn’t.
“I mean because I’m an orphan,” Odysseus said, and Dash startled. “You’re too young to know the story, I suppose, but it’s not a secret. My Ma adopted and raised me after my parents died.”
“Oh,” Dash said. The glow in the sky brightened, a pink and gold band over the water as the rest turned a pale blue. He scrubbed at his face and took a breath. “Was it hard?”
“Yeah, it was hard,” Odysseus said, and Dash actually swallowed a laugh. Nobody had ever said that to him. They said he was brave, or strong, but it’s like admitting this was hard went against some kind of rule. “But I had people taking care of me, and even though sometimes I felt alone when I was sad, I never was, not really. That’s what it’ll be like for you.”
Dash looked down at the handkerchief, pale blue with navy stitching around the edges. “It hurts,” he said. “And everyone keeps telling me I’m brave, and I want to be, but sometimes I don’t know what that means. I don’t think it means not crying when something bad happens.”
Odysseus gave him a sharp look sideways, kind of like he was trying to read a book over Dash’s shoulder without him knowing. “I think you’re right,” he said. “But for right now, you’re probably going to have a lot of feelings and not a lot of places to put them. If you wanted to stop by the Athletics Club after school, it might help.”
Dash sat back, eyes wide. “Isn’t that for special kids?”
“Who says you’re not?” Odysseus rests a hand on his shoulder, warm and reassuring. “Some of the older kids are there to train for more serious things, but you don’t have to. You can just come and have somewhere to go, something to do so you don’t feel so lost and confused, and people who’ll help you when you’re feeling that way. Blood isn’t the only family you’ll have, Dash. Now’s as good a time as any to learn that.”
A strange drumroll started up in Dash’s chest as the first glint of the sun appeared over the top of the sea, a sharp sliver of gold. “Maybe I will.”
Odysseus smiled, and he reached up to ruffle Dash’s hair. “Mags will be glad to hear it,” he said. “We’ll be looking for you.”
By the time Dash stood at his first Reaping, he understood what it all meant. He’d seen snatches on TV, the blood and the bodies and the beautiful boys and girls shining on stage who didn’t come home. He knew what Odysseus meant, then, when he said Dash didn’t have to mean it, that he could come to the Athletics Club and train as a way to make himself stronger, fight the fear and find a family - and he also knew he wouldn’t. That day on the beach Odysseus took a young boy feeling alone and terrified and made him feel safe and loved, and Dash knew exactly how to pay that back.
In the end, Dash didn’t have to volunteer, and Odysseus died under torture in the Capitol. He was Mags’ second in command in rebellion planning, a Victor who never wanted to volunteer but did so anyway because his family had bad odds and he’d rather it be him than one of his adoptive brothers or sisters. The Capitol killed him because he didn’t give them what they wanted, and Dash should be proud - and he is, somewhere, in that part of himself where district pride still means something - but mostly he just feels hollow.
Much later he returns to Four, Selene’s idea, and spends the day with his grandda, surrounded by kids and cousins and former classmates from the Athletics Club, and it’s good, it’s healing. He doesn’t go see the Victors because that feels weird, plus it’s different now with the mix of districts in the village. But he does take a wander down the beach, and he pauses at the house on the water where Odysseus lived. His family’s home, laughter and music filtering out through the windows, and Dash takes a second to soak that in, the sounds of life even with the man’s giant presence gone.
“Good man, that one,” Grandda says, following Dash’s gaze. “He asked after you while you were gone, sure you’d do great things. He’d be glad you brought the others home.”
Dash smiles, though his eyes burn from the salt spray and he has to drag a hand across his face. “Thanks, grandda, we tried.”
Grandda grips Dash’s hand, strong even after all these years. “You’re a good boy, Dash. He’d be proud, and so am I. Mags too.”
A laugh escapes Dash at that, and he wipes his eyes and runs a hand through his hair. “That’s not exactly hard.”
“Maybe not, but it sure meant something if she wasn’t,” Grandda says, grinning. “Now come on, we’d better get back if we want to eat them conch fritters before the last afternoon train.”
“Conch fritters!” Dash presses a hand to his chest in dramatic approval. “You’re spoiling me!”
“Can’t spoil the good ones,” Grandda says, smiling. “Besides, they’d never let me hear the end of it if I let you go home without.”
Dash takes one last look at the village as the waves lap at his feet, then turns and heads back into town.
for anon: "mentor feels with Nero and Lyme"
It feels absolutely surreal to be standing back in the Village basketball court with a ball in her hands, making free throws at the empty net, but after everything that happened - the Quarter Quell, the war, the reconstruction efforts - Lyme finds comfort in the normalcy of pebbled rubble beneath her fingertips and the sharp ting of the ball against the concrete.
Normally she’d face off against Brutus or Claudius for a game of one-on-one, but Brutus has his hands full with Petra and Claudius is off on a supply run, and Lyme needed the air more than she needed the companionship. Her aim is off after so long away, and she plays a backing track of typical Brutus smack-talk in her head as the ball pings off the rim and flies out of bounds.
Nero catches it, tosses it back. “Hey,” he says. “Got room for another?”
Lyme’s chest tightens. They used to play more when she was younger, and she remembers the sharp buzz of competition, her own sharp laughter as she fouled him constantly, slamming her shoulder into his broad chest, the growls of frustration when it didn’t matter because she could fling herself directly at him and his solid bulk would stay calmly in place. She tries to picture that now, the rivalry and opposition, and a flare of panic spikes.
“I’m not really in the mood,” she says, trying for casual, but Nero’s eyes flicker and she knows she failed. “You can be my ball boy, though.”
“Can do,” Nero says, giving her a salute.
They say nothing for a while, Lyme shooting and Nero throwing the ball back to her. And it’s fine, they aired things out after Lyme got back and he doesn’t blame her, he said so, everything’s fine, and if the thought of playing against him fills Lyme with a sharp, unknowable dread, what does that matter? She lived through a war, maybe she’s had enough of going up against anyone for a lifetime. Nobody would question her if that were true.
Finally, though, Nero catches the ball as it angles off the backboard but doesn’t toss it back, instead shifting it awkwardly in his hands. “Hey, look,” he says. “About that propo they made me do way back …”
A knife trails down Lyme’s back, tracing the outline of her spine. She holds herself still, hands at her sides. “Oh, that?” she says, all casual. “It’s fine. We all had to do things. Say things, whatever. They had Enobaria. I get it.”
Nero’s mouth presses thin, and he twists the basketball in toward his chest. “No, you don’t. They wanted me or Misha and I chose me because I was afraid she’d have a harder time taking it back. And it was either Bari or you, and I chose Bari, which is what I always do. And then you came back and I was so worried about making sure you knew I didn’t blame you for leaving, that you didn’t think you had to apologize or anything, I didn’t actually make things right.”
It hits her harder than she thought it would, like the ground shifted under her but at the same time she falls up instead of down. “You don’t have to. I’m the one who left.”
“Yeah, and I know what I said, and I knew they’d make sure you heard it,” Nero said, implacable, as the hitch grew in Lyme’s throat. “I should have said it then, I should’ve asked you to forgive me for what I said to you - about you.”
It hurts to breathe. To blink. The air finds her lungs in ragged gulps. “You don’t have to,” Lyme says again, like a child. (She’s almost forty, this is ridiculous, she doesn’t need - she wants -) “I don’t blame you, I was gone and they had Enobaria in custody, you made the choice any mentor would have made -”
Nero sets the ball down, slow and deliberate, and crosses the court to stand in front of her. “You didn’t deserve that,” he says. He rests one hand on her shoulder, and when Lyme doesn’t jerk away (she sucks in a breath, opens her eyes wide against the prickle behind her lids) he brings the other up to join its opposite. “You aren’t a traitor. You never were. You were brave, and you did what was right, and I don’t care about the reasons, I’m sorry I used our relationship against you. I’m ashamed anyone else heard it. And I’m gonna make damned sure I never, never gonna choose between you and anything else, ever again. Will you forgive me?”
“Fuck you,” Lyme bursts out, swiping a hand across her eyes. “The war is over. I thought I was done with all this feelings bullshit, and here you go dragging all this up again?”
Nero wipes her cheek with his thumb, the gesture so forgotten yet so familiar that Lyme nearly breaks. “One more, baby girl, that’s all,” he says, gentle and immovable as the distant mountains. “I want you to forgive me, but that means you gotta feel like you deserve to be asked. If you’re still carrying around all that traitor bullshit, if you still feel like you’re lucky we allow you to be here, that’s part of what I’m doing right now. Let that go.”
Her head reels, but Nero’s hands on her shoulders keep her steady. “What is this, absolution?” Lyme asks, but the sarcasm she aimed for comes out sideways, twists dangerously into desperation.
“You and me both, sweetheart,” Nero says. “You deserve to be here. What do you say?”
Lyme hasn’t seen the inside of an Arena for twenty-five years, but something inside her unspools at the old catchphrase. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “I forgive you.” It sounds strange, so stilted and artificial, but then Nero smiles and she hardly cares. “But I’m not going to say the other thing because I’m not a fucking eighteen-year-old, so don’t try me.”
Nero grins, teeth sharp. “I could still wrestle you to the ground, little girl, are you sure you want to test that out?”
“Ha!” Lyme dodges behind him and grabs the ball from where rolled onto the grass. “How about first to five?”
“You’re on,” Nero says, moving to guard in front of her, and Lyme grins and takes her shot.
for
kawuli: "Alec/Jake things"
“I think you can chill, I told you they’d like you.”
The train rumbles down the repaired tracks, and Alec flashes a mock-glare at his boyfriend before turning his gaze back to the window and trying to count the buildings that flash past. The old reflex to run through the death list feels distasteful now, and would probably qualify as an act of treason under the new regime. “I’m not sure if you’ve met me, but I’m not exactly chill,” Alec says. “I’m pretty sure I was the first toddler with anxiety.”
Jake rolls his eyes, and he rubs his thumb over Alec’s, their fingers tangled and hands resting between them. Alec is still getting used to that part, the casual affection like it’s no big deal. “You know what I mean. They loved you, I’ve never seen my dad get like that about anyone since … honestly, I can’t remember the last time. I half thought he was gonna propose to you or something. Which is exactly what I said would happen, you’re like, the parody of the perfect boyfriend everyone’s parents want their kid to bring home.”
Alec makes a face. “Okay, come on -”
“You think I’m kidding?” Jake nudges him in the shoulder. “You’re polite and respectful, you’re handsome but in a clean-cut way, not a threatening way, and that whole District 2 Peacekeeper’s son thing means you know how to talk to parents so all the hackles come right off. Plus you’re a doctor, which has only been a problem for exactly two people in the history of ever.”
Alec snorts at that. It was never about his becoming a doctor, he knows that now, but the memory of his teenaged outrage still simmers dark below the surface. “You’re not a bad catch yourself either, if I had a normal family to bring you home to they’d love you too.”
“Oh no, we are not making this about my self-esteem.” Jake narrows his eyes. “My point is that my parents were always going to love you, but I also had another point, which is that you obviously didn’t believe me.”
The urge to drum his fingers twitches through his hand. Alec exhales and curls his toes instead to try to dispel the impulse. “I believed you.”
“Did you, though?” Jake taps the fingers of his free hand against his leg - no childhood scoldings against fidgeting in his household, or if so, he consciously decided not to care - and lets out a frustrated breath. “Okay, look. My parents went crazy over you, but the thing is … I’m not exactly sure who it is they met.”
Alec freezes.
“You know, I know you were a Career, you told me, you did the Peacekeeper thing for a while and I know what that means,” Jake says. “And I killed people in the war, probably more than you, even, so I figured it wasn’t that weird in the end. This is the first time I’ve ever really seen it and thought, wow, okay, yeah, this is the Program you don’t talk about. You became a different person in there.”
Alec swallows. He wants to twist his hands together - sit on them, splay them on his knees to stop from twisting them together - but Jake still holds his right in his, and so he curls his left into a fist and digs his thumbnail into the side of his finger. “It wasn’t - it’s not like that. It’s just a thing I do when I’m nervous.”
Jake glances at him, and he’s serious but not angry so that’s something. “Babe, I’m not saying you aren’t charming and intelligent or whatever, but this was like watching you put on a mask. And I mean that literally, okay, I saw the exact minute it happened. We were outside the door and you closed your eyes and counted to five and when you opened them you … changed. You looked like those kids on stage.”
“My brother,” Alec says, letting his eyes fall shut. “You mean I looked like my brother.”
He hears Jake’s intake of breath. “Shit, no, that’s not -”
“No, that’s what I mean, I based my persona off my brother,” Alec says. He keeps his eyes closed because it’s easier that way, leaves their joined hands and the jostling of the train beneath him as his grounding points. “Everybody loved Creed, he was charming and funny and witty without being too smooth, all the adults went crazy for him. I never knew what to do with myself in the Centre, so whenever I wasn’t sure, I always thought, what would Creed do? Your persona is yourself with an edge, you know, a little sharper, a little harder, like you without the edges filed off, but I wasn’t … I’m not like that, I was never meant to be there. I could never find myself, and the more I tried the more I fumbled. So I used Creed instead. It was easy. And now when I have to charm people, like for fundraising for the hospital, stuff like that, it’s easier to fall back on old habits.”
A low exhale, the sound of Jake pushing a hand through his hair. “Okay, but these aren’t donors at some fundraising gala, these are my parents. I know I don’t always get along with them, but the reasons I didn’t are pretty much all the reasons why they’d love you.”
The laugh escapes Alec like the snap of bone, and he feels Jake wince. His parents chose loyalty to the Peacekeepers over their district; if Jake had to date a man, the son of a decorated second-twenty couple had been the best they could hope for. Alec decided not to bring up the awkward semi-estrangement issue. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Jake says. “I just meant … they’re my parents. You didn’t have to go into your head like it was some weird Centre test. Wouldn’t have brought you if I knew it was gonna stress you out that bad.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Alec says, suddenly tired. “Or - I mean, I did, but it’s not like I made a conscious plan ahead of time not to be myself when I met them. But it’s important, they’re your parents and I wanted to make a good impression, and we got there and I started getting nervous, and I don’t have a great track record with loyalists, so I did what I thought might help.” He rubs a hand across his forehead. “And it did work, so there’s that?”
Jake sighs. “Babe, did you ever think that your brother was eighteen when he died?”
Alec sits up straight, a flash of shock and anger splashing over him. “What?”
“I mean, have you met any eighteen-year-olds lately?” Jake turns in his seat, and he takes Alec’s hand in both of his and regards him seriously. “I’m not dissing your brother, okay, you loved him and if he were alive I’m sure we would get along great, but he was a teenager, and then he died. You were his little brother, and you felt like you couldn’t ever measure up, and then he died a hero and you made him into this mythical thing in your head. I’m glad it helped you, babe, but you’re older than he ever got to be. When you’re charming people now, it’s not your brother they’re falling for, it’s you.” He grimaced a little, his expression one of mild theatrics. “A weird, Career-mode version of you, maybe, but still you. Give yourself some credit, huh?”
Alec lets out a long breath. “I’m going to need to think about that one for a while.”
“That’s fine,” Jake says, and he leans up to kiss Alec right there on the train, though he keeps it short. Alec might not care about facing disapproval over having a boyfriend anymore, but he wouldn’t make out with a hypothetical girl in public, either. Some things are just polite. “Next time maybe we can try again with normal-Alec, because you didn’t do any kind of weird performance with me, and I like you just fine.”
Alec grins at him a little, the bands around his chest unclenching a little. “Yeah, but you also hit on me while you were bleeding to death, apparently, so unless your parents think I’m super sexy -”
“Ohhh my god,” Jake groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Never mind. Go back to being shy, because if you get along with my parents then you’ll have to meet my sister, and I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”
“Love you too,” Alec says, and kisses Jake’s fingers while he grumbles. There’s still a lot to think about - about Creed, eternally eighteen, his memory slowly taking on the sheen of legend, about Alec and his need to protect himself through the relic of a totalitarian murder regime he still finds comforting - but for now he looks out the window and watches a flock of birds take flight from along a telephone wire, their wings black against the cobalt sky.