Fic: Daddy's Little Girl
Title: Daddy’s Little Girl
Characters: OCs (and tiny cameo Brutus)
Rating: R
Warnings: character death. A lot of character death. IN CANON, EVERYONE DIES. I’M SORRY.
Summary: Paul, an officer in the Peacekeeper Corps, is an ex-Career who has dedicated his life to serving his district and his country. He swore an oath to the Capitol and he will uphold it to his dying breath. But watching his daughter Selene do the same is … harder.
This is a story of the Rebellion from the other side, told through the eyes of a soldier, husband, and father.
A/N: Contains headcanon stolen from lorataprose regarding District Two’s Career system, but none of it is necessary to follow this story.
(One day I’m gonna write a canon divergence version where nobody dies, because that's the real universe, dammit.)
1: The Centre
Paul has a good life, all things considered.
He was a Centre kid back in the day, and while he wasn’t anywhere close to Volunteer, he got through his Field Exam and made the transfer to the Peacekeeping Academy at age sixteen. He’d also turned out to make a far better Peacekeeper than tribute trainee, too, and even though his active-duty career got cut short by that fugitive from Four shooting a harpoon through his leg, the Corps looks after its own and he was transferred back to Two for treatment, rehabilitation, and - when it became clear he’d walk with a limp for the rest of his life - to work in the district office.
And he has Julia. She was a doctor at the hospital they’d put him in - not his doctor, that crosses a line - but they’d met while he was in rehab, the pretty dark-haired doctor with a presence that could light up the room, and he’d made sure he was discharged before asking her out. He was so nervous, but somehow she said yes, and they were married within two years. Within another year, she was pregnant.
Before their daughter was born, Paul didn’t think he could love anyone as much as Julia, but Selene had him wrapped around his little finger from the moment he laid eyes on her.
The only problem was, he doesn’t really know what to do with a child. It made Julia laugh, how thoroughly and yet cluelessly Paul dotes on their daughter, but he can’t help it. He’s an only child, his only cousins several years older, and - well, basically, the youngest kids he ever interacts with regularly are eighteen-year-old cadets on their training rotation. He has no idea what to do with a baby.
It gets easier as Selene grows and develops a personality of her own. She’s a wild one, his daughter, always wanting to run off and get into all sorts of mischief - Paul learns he needs to take a firm hand with her, because if she so much as smells wavering on his part it’s all over - but she’s so bright and eager and curious about everything, too. When he’s home from work she’ll follow him around incessantly and pepper him with questions, or sit on his lap and demand stories, or steal his badge and make him play Peacekeepers and robbers.
(Which is not a real game, he’s pretty sure, but somehow he ends up hiding behind the couch anyway as Selene directs the ‘hunt’ for ‘robbers’ in a loud whisper.)
“It’s because she idolises you,” Julia tells him, one day, full of fond exasperation. “She wants to be just like you when she grows up. It’s not a bad thing.”
Paul laughs and kisses her shoulder, because it’s - amazing, it really is. He’s never thought of himself as a role model of any kind for anyone, and yet here he is. Selene looks up from the rug where she’s playing and grins, bright and sunny, and holds her arms out to be picked up - so of course Paul does, and the next hour is spent tossing his little girl through the air just to hear her laugh.
--
They enrol Selene at the Centre when she’s seven, because that’s what you do - Julia was a Centre kid herself too, though she left before Residential. Everyone spends at least a couple of years there. Selene takes to that too like she does anything, and every day she comes back home grinning and full of excited stories about everything.
Julia worries about that, though - the stories. They’re not just about how she climbed the ropes today or how her team won dodgeball, they’re also about how she stole a ball from another girl and got into a fight, or how a bigger boy got into her face so she broke his nose. Paul doesn’t think much of it, all the kids get into scrapes when they’re there - Paul himself did, back in the day - but Julia does.
“I just don’t want her to become a monster,” Julia says, biting her lip. “And I know - she’s only eight, she’s just little. But.”
“I think she’s just bored,” Paul tells her. Selene’s a good kid, but restless, and the Centre gives her an outlet for all her leftover physical energy. “School’s just not interesting, I know the feeling.”
“I suppose,” Julia sighs, but the worry-lines don’t smooth out.
“You think maybe I’m not spending enough time at home?” Paul ventures, after a moment. Selene acts up when he’s not around to tell her to behave; just the other day he had to give her a firm talking-to for back-talking her mother. Work’s been busy lately, since he got promoted and Ed retired, and he hasn’t been around as much as he’d like. “Maybe I should take her out camping or something.”
Julia laughs. “Paul, I love you, but neither of you have the patience for camping. Selene would run off and set things on fire, and you’d help by chucking branches in her direction.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be able to catch her,” Paul concedes, grinning. “Okay, okay, I’ll think of something else.”
“Do.” Julia stands on her tiptoes and kisses him. “She misses you.”
By the time Selene comes home proudly showing off her second black strand, Paul’s hit on something that she might like. His daughter has been pleading with him for years to let her try his gun, and he’s always said no before, but she’s nine now and they’ll be starting her on weapons soon if they haven’t already. Paul figures he might as well give her a head start.
“Let’s go outside and celebrate,” Paul tells her, ruffling her hair. Selene scrunches up her face at him, but he pulls his pistol belt on and winks and she lights up and follows him out like a puppy.
Paul makes her go through full the whole safety briefing first (Julia insisted; she made the very valid point that if he was going to let Selene fire a gun he had better make sure she knew to be safe about it.). And wonder of wonders, Selene actually sits through the whole lecture, and when Paul quizzes her she recites it all back perfectly.
The wonders of bribery, Paul thinks, ruffling her hair again.
He shows her how to hold and aim a gun properly, both his hands on her little ones - he’s leaned his cane against the wall, he doesn’t need it while standing - and there’s a decent amount of draw, so he helps her pull the trigger too, but you wouldn’t know it from her delighted laughter when the gun goes off and hits the empty can he’s balanced on the fence.
“Just like that,” Paul tells her, and Selene tilts her head all the way back and grins up at him. “Wanna go again?”
“Yes please,” Selene says.
This time he lets her pull the trigger herself - she takes three fingers to do it, frowning fiercely in concentration, and it’s a good thing Paul’s still holding the gun too or that would pull it way out of alignment - and lets out a happy whoop as it hits the target again.
It’s the best afternoon they’ve had in a while. He was right, he does need to spend more time at home; Selene’s already taller than he remembers, she’s up to his chest, and he’s missed the way she chatters on about something that excites her. He picks her up and slings her over his shoulder, and she shrieks with laughter; very soon she will be too old to be picked up like this. She’s grown up so fast already.
All too soon Julia calls them in for dinner and Selene pouts a little, but, wonder of wonders, doesn’t pitch a fit. She even remembers to check that the pistol’s not loaded before putting it away. Yes, this was an excellent idea.
--
It becomes their thing on weekends, just the two of them and the beat-up cans on the fence. Sometimes if Selene’s been good Paul will take her out to the trails and let her shoot branches off trees. And when the snow starts to fall, Paul gets permission from the Head Peacekeeper to bring her in to the shooting range. (Or, more precisely, when he mentioned to Ramon that he was teaching his kid to shoot and she was getting pretty good, the man had laughed uproariously and said, “Bring her in and set her on the recruits. They’re sloppy, it’ll do them good to get their asses handed to them by a nine-year-old.”)
She charms all his colleagues from the get-go, and Paul has never grinned as wide as he has to see old Ted - grizzled, scowling, no-nonsense Ted - give in to her demands for a go on his revolver, or the soft smile on the man’s face when he said yes and Selene flung her arms around his waist.
The years go by, and Paul continues to take Selene out on long hikes and his colleagues continue to teach her how to handle all kinds of weaponry. For her eleventh birthday Helen teaches her how to use a rifle, it’s far too big for her but she hits the target anyway, to the cheers of everyone in the range.
(They tape a picture of Selene holding a rifle that’s absurdly big for her to the door to the weapons locker, captioned “Still A Better Shot Than You”. The first time Paul sees it, he laughs for ten minutes straight.)
But it doesn’t work, not the way Paul and Julia hoped. Yes, it gives her an outlet and something else to focus on rather than the Centre - school isn’t cutting it, her grades are decent, but all Paul’s efforts to encourage her to work harder fall on deaf ears - but the thing is. The thing is. His little girl’s wild, always has been, and the thing with the Centre is that it gives wild kids structure but it also encourages them. Paul had hoped being at the Centre would calm her down a little, but it hasn’t, it’s just channelling her energy.
On one memorable occasion, Selene comes back with a long gash down her forearm that required five stitches. “It’s fine, Mom,” Selene had said, exasperated, at Julia’s shocked questioning. “The doctors said it’ll heal right up.”
“Watch your tone,” Paul says, reprovingly. “Selene, honey, we’re just concerned. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Selene says, but her eyes flicker - not guiltily, exactly, but she’s lying and she knows it. Paul folds his arms and glares, and finally Selene huffs. “Some of the twelves thought it’d be funny to pick on us, and we didn’t let them. That’s all.”
“With a knife?” Julia says incredulously.
“One of them had one,” Selene says, entirely unrepentant. “We took it from him in the end, though. The trainers gave us cake.”
Julia doesn’t quite fling her hands up, but it’s a close thing.
“I don’t like it,” Julia tells him, quietly but fiercely, that night. “It’s not working, I think we should pull her out.”
“She was attacked and defended herself,” Paul argues, without entirely knowing why. He can read between the lines and in most of her stories Selene’s either the troublemaker or the ringleader of troublemakers - the aggression wasn’t as one-sided as she describes, he’s pretty sure.
Julia glares at him. “Sure. And I’m President Snow.”
Paul tries again. “It’s - she’s just restless. She needs an outlet, that’s all. I used to be the same way when I was little. It’ll be fine, Julia, you’ll see.”
And - she does, that’s the thing. Selene’s a model student at school, good grades and behaviour, and around the range she always minds him and the others. It’s just in the Centre that she gets into scraps, where it’s safe and there are a ton of trainers and doctors around for when the kids run up against their limits, so that’s okay.
But then Selene starts disappearing in the evenings, sometimes, or taking longer than usual to come back from the Centre, and when she comes back she has a weird light in her eyes. When asked, she just shrugs. More disturbingly, when they go hiking, Selene starts asking about when he goes hunting with his buddies, if she can come, how hard it is to shoot moving targets… Paul warily concedes that it’s harder, and he introduces her to the moving targets range at the district office, a series of targets of varying shapes and sizes, suspended on wires and shot through the air. Selene grins, fiercely, and asks for a pistol.
He doesn’t know how to reach her, anymore, and he tries anything and everything he can think of. He even brings her hunting with Ramon and Helen, once, over Julia’s objections - which turn out to be well-founded, when Selene nails a goose on her first go and scampers over to picks it up with a wide, victorious grin. Ramon laughs and congratulates her, but Helen shoots Paul a quick, unreadable look which he pretends not to see.
He knows he’s losing her.
Then she turns thirteen, and he runs out of time. Selene comes back home one day with the paperwork for Residential, and Paul’s little girl meets his gaze with his dark blue eyes and tells him if he doesn’t sign it she’ll just find another way.
“I’m sorry,” Paul whispers to Julia that night as she sobs into a pillow. “I’m so sorry.”
2: The Corps
Once Selene leaves, the quiet is agonising.
Paul never realised before how much he loved just having her around. The clatter of footsteps, her laugh, even how she always banged doors open despite Paul and Julia’s admonishing because she gets impatient and forgets. Julia keeps shooting haunted looks at the door to Selene’s bedroom, closed firmly and untouched since she left; Paul keeps setting the table for three, and has to hurry to remove the last set before Julia notices.
(The empty place is worse.)
They leave Selene’s room alone for a whole year, but when she’s fourteen and the stipend still keeps coming, Paul can’t ignore it anymore. He knows how this goes; she’s in Residential now and if she gets cut - when - if - the Centre won’t just send her home, they’ll transfer her to the post-Residential dorms. And if she comes back, she won’t want all the miscellaneous stuff from her childhood, all the books and toys and games and the little air-gun that Paul gave her when she was ten.
He should box it all up, give it away or put it in storage or whatever, but the moment he tries - the moment he opens the door and walks into his daughter’s room - it hits him all over again.
Julia finds him there an hour later, kneeling on the floor with his head in his hands. “Oh, Paul,” she says softly, sinking to the ground next to him and wrapping her arms around his waist.
“I miss her,” Paul says, the words wrenching themselves from him unbidden. “I - it’s been a year, this stuff’s all just collecting dust, I figured I’d go through it and sort it all out. But I can’t.”
Julia doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just buries her face in his neck. “Don’t do this to yourself, my love,” she murmurs. “It’s not your fault. Don’t beat yourself up over what can’t be changed.”
“But it is my fault.” Paul closes his eyes. “I kept her in, I said it was fine, I even took her hunting. And I just, I can’t.”
Now the tears do fall, and Julia makes a soft sound that punches him right in the gut and shifts, pulling him close and cradling his head in her arms. He fists his hands in her blouse and cries into her neck.
They do it together, in the end. Selene didn’t take much with her, and her remaining things are a bit of a mess, miscellaneous trinkets jammed into drawers and the back of shelves. It takes all night - more than once Paul or Julia pick something up that triggers a memory and they have to stop - but at long last they’ve gotten through it all, they’ve kept what they want to keep and boxed up and labelled the rest.
“I’ll take ‘em down to the Peacehome later today,” Paul says finally, tired and - not happy, exactly, he hasn’t been happy for a while, but fulfilled. It’s like they’ve finally lanced the wound and now it has a chance to heal. “They can always use the supplies.”
Julia shakes her head. “Tomorrow,” she tells him. “We’ve done enough for now. Come to bed?”
He does, and afterwards they hold each other and watch the sunrise through their window.
--
A few months later, Julia brings up the topic of having more children.
She’s always wanted more than one, Paul knows, it’s just that Selene was a difficult pregnancy and Julia had been confined to bed for the last month, and they’d agreed it might not be a good idea to try for more. And to have another child now feels like - well, it feels like they’re trying to replace Selene, and that doesn’t sit well with Paul.
“I don’t want to _replace_ her,” Julia says fiercely, when he tells her this. “How can you say that? It’s just … too quiet, with just the two of us. They’ve been some breakthroughs with obstetrics in the past few years, and we’re still young. We could have two more, or three.”
Paul isn’t so sure; it’s not that he doesn’t want more children, it’s that he doesn’t think he can handle losing another one. But Julia is determined, and so he lets himself be convinced.
Kit is a difficult birth. They both make it, but barely, and after they put him in Julia’s arms - after they let Paul cradle him and it’s just like Selene all over again, he looks at the precious human being he and Julia have made and forgets to breathe - the doctors pull him aside and tell him in no uncertain terms that having any more children will kill Julia.
“I know she wanted this one,” the doctor says, and oh right, it’s Hazel, one of Julia’s friends. “But you can’t let her talk you into having any more. We nearly lost her.”
Paul closes his eyes. He can’t imagine losing Julia, too. “I won’t,” he says. “You have my word.”
Kit is wonderful child. He’s adorable, full of energy and affection, and Paul loves him wholeheartedly and carefully does not even think about comparing him to Selene at the same age. Sometimes it’s unavoidable; he’s got Paul’s eyes too, and Julia’s smile, and when Paul tosses him in the air his delighted laugh is just like Selene’s used to be. But he’s his own person, their son, with his own likes and dislikes and personality, and he doesn’t deserve to grow up in the shadow of his missing sister.
They give Kit the spare room and turn Selene’s old room into the new spare, for that very reason.
His son grows, and Julia laughs and smiles, and the hole in Paul’s heart doesn’t heal, exactly, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.
--
Then the summer of the 72nd Games arrives. Julia’s determined to treat it like any other year, but Paul can’t. The stipend comes in every month, more and more each year, and that means Selene’s still in the running; and still being in the running means there’s every chance Paul will see his little girl up on stage in this year’s Reaping.
He can’t treat it like any other year because it’s not.
“You’re an idiot,” Julia tells him, when he tells her he wants to go to the main square for the Reaping. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“I have to,” Paul says. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince, her or him, and he swallows. “Julia - if it’s her, I have to know, I have to see her.”
Julia sighs. “Alright,” she says. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to -”
“If you do, I do.” Julia gives him a small, sad smile. “Hazel can look after Kit for the day, he’s too young for that mess, but I’ll be there with you. I’m not letting you go there alone.”
And Paul hears what she doesn’t say - if it’s Selene then she doesn’t deserve to be distracted by a brother she doesn’t know she has - but to say that acknowledges the possibility and he can’t do that, so he just squeezes Julia’s hand in thanks.
When Paul and Julia get there, Paul remembers why he usually makes the reverse trek and watches the Reaping from the nearest satellite location instead of the main square. It’s packed, full of kids who were drawn in the pre-Reaping and anxious parents who know it’s not going to be theirs but are worried anyway - the 53rd Games might be nearly two decades past now but it could always happen again, the Volunteers exist through the Capitol’s benevolence, never forget - and, yes, the Seniors in a line at the back of the square, shoulder to shoulder with their left hands over their right wrists.
(Paul remembers that pose. He’d only stood in the Senior ranks once, over thirty years ago now, but he’s never forgotten.)
They call the boys first, this year, and Paul carefully does not burst with impatience as a husky eighteen-year-old calls out and mounts the stage. And then they call the girl, and the escort calls for volunteers, and -
“I volunteer!”
Paul can’t move. By his side, Julia is gripping his hand tight enough to bruise. The children part to let the Volunteer walk up but Paul can’t see from where he’s standing, he doesn’t want to see, he needs to see - he catches a flash of red hair moving through the crowd -
Selene’s hair is dark. Paul’s heart hammers in his chest.
And yes - the cameras zoom on the girl as she mounts the stage and it’s not his little girl, surely it’s not, not unless the Centre does bonesculpting as well as hair dye - but it’s been five years, who knows what she looks like now, and his memories are of a little girl grinning at him over a too-big rifle -
“What’s your name?” the escort coos.
“Petra,” the girl says, and Paul closes his eyes against the tide of awful, overwhelming, crushing relief.
And, fast on its heels, shame. It’s not his daughter but it’s someone’s daughter, and that someone will be going home tonight and locking the door and holing up in front of the television anyway. Two’s Career program means children and parents the district over can take tesserae without fear, and it provides structure and a base on which Panem’s Peacekeepers are trained, but the two tributes that go in are still someone’s children.
(It’s an honour. And yet.)
“Let’s go home,” Julia tells him, and Paul lets her tug him away.
When they get home Paul picks Kit up and squeezes him so tight the boy squeaks.
--
Petra wins the 72nd Hunger Games. Paul’s glad; she’s not his daughter but it could’ve been his girl up there in her place, and he was rooting for her to win. Taking that mace to the hip must have hurt like a bitch (Paul rubs his own leg in memory), but she limps on stage for the finale anyway and fields questions from Caesar like the professional she is, and sits through the recap with barely a blink.
Paul’s impressed.
He and Julia win tickets to see Petra when her Victory Tour returns to District Two, and Paul puts on his best dress whites and shakes the hand of the girl who went in in his daughter’s place. “Congratulations on your victory,” he says, inclining his head in respect. “And welcome back.”
“Thank you,” Petra says. Brutus towers at her shoulder, over a foot taller than his young Victor, and Paul nods at him as well and touches his fist to his chest in a salute before transferring his cane back from his left hand.
Petra’s gaze flickers to his cane - yes, Paul thinks, I have one too - but he doesn’t comment and neither does she, and there are other people waiting to speak to her and so he and Julia circulate away, her hand warm on his arm.
After that, Paul thinks it’s over. Selene’s safe; the Centre will take care of her, and they’ll help her find a job and a place and she’ll be okay.
Then he comes home one day and Julia’s agitated and twitchy, and she sends Kit out to play with the neighbours before dinner and turns to him. Paul only has a moment to wonder what happened before Julia says, “Selene was here today.”
And. Just. Nowhere in Paul’s wildest imagination did he expect Selene to show up, here, now. He stares. “What?”
“You heard me.” Julia blows out a breath and crosses her arms, rubbing her hands over her upper arms as if cold, even though it’s the middle of spring. Without thinking about it, Paul steps close and covers her hands with his. Julia shoots him a pained smile. “Said she got out, said they’d offered her a place in the Academy. Asked Kit’s name. Then she said goodbye and walked away.”
Shit. Paul closes his eyes. Shit, his little girl came back, and he wasn’t here, and she saw Kit and what she must have thought -
“I should’ve -” Julia’s voice cracks. “I didn’t know what to say to her, Paul, I never did, but I should’ve said something - I’m sorry -”
“It’s okay.” It’s not okay, but there’s nothing to be gained by recriminations now, and so Paul just hugs his wife close. Julia clings to his chest. “It’ll be okay.”
3: The War
After that, Paul resolves to keep an eye on Selene from a distance. He’s not on the Academy staff, but if she makes it through - and she will, if Paul knows his girl at all - her name will be on the rolls soon enough. And yes, when next spring’s class graduates, Selene’s name is at the top of the list, assigned to the Scouts division in the Capitol.
(It doesn’t surprise Paul that she’s left ‘Valent’ off her paperwork, but it’s like a little knife in his heart anyway.)
Kit turns six the next year, and this time, Paul hesitates. “We don’t have to enrol him at the Centre next year,” Paul says, one night after he’s gone to bed. His boy’s a good kid, bright and rambunctious, and he’ll do well there - but. But.
Julia bites her lip, and Paul knows the same thoughts are running through her head. It’s unheard of for people of their set to not send their kids to the Centre, at least for a couple of years - Ted’s eleven-year-old daughter is in, and Ramon’s son will be starting this summer. If they withhold Kit there’ll be a lot of questions and raised eyebrows. (Kit himself will ask, if his peers start going to the Centre after school and he doesn’t. And he knows he had an older sister but not that she almost made Volunteer, because they don’t want to put that on him yet; they’d have to explain that if they withhold him.)
But Paul remembers telling Julia it’d be fine to leave Selene in, and he promised himself he’d never compare Kit to Selene but he doesn’t think he can stand in that square again in twelve years and wonder if it’ll be his son on the podium.
“If we pull him out at nine, it should be fine,” Julia says eventually. “It’s still just an after-school sports program at that point, and he’ll learn a lot. We shouldn’t deny him the opportunity.”
Paul nods. Julia was in the Centre too, though her parents pulled her out at eleven, and she credits it for her skill with a scalpel and how she can stand up to the most distraught of patient’s relatives. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s do that.”
But they never get the chance, because the 75th Games happens and the entire country rises up in rebellion. Two holds firm - Two always holds firm - but it’s hard, so hard. Julia practically lives at the hospital, and Paul pulls double shifts and issues orders and sends good kids to the other districts to keep order or die trying.
And in the midst of it all, Selene disappears.
Paul had been following her career - not too closely, it’d attract attention if a district officer from Two started accessing the Scouts Division records - but his buddy knows someone in the quartermaster’s office in the Capitol, and every so often he’ll pass along a tidbit or two. Selene’s squad is in the Capitol this quarter; Selene’s squad brought in some runaways and got a commendation; Selene’s squad was part of Snow’s security detail for that event last month and it went fine.
He doesn’t even wonder at first, is the awful part. The Scouts go into comms blackout before the Games - they’re too involved, Chuck explains, and if they’re allowed to talk they might leak something - but usually by the time the Victor’s announced, they’re allowed to talk again, and news resumes. This year’s a mess, with Twelve’s Katniss Everdeen blows out the force field, and then all coverage halts until her district partner comes on television days later and calls for a cease-fire - so Paul doesn’t expect to hear any word for a while - but then a week passes, and a month, and still nothing.
He takes a risk and gets his buddy to call Chuck directly from his console. “What is it now, Ray?” Chuck demands, a harried look in his eyes. “I told you, we can’t get another drop until -” His eyes narrow when he recognises Paul. “What -”
“I’m not asking you for anything classified,” Paul says, in a rush. “I just wanna know if you heard anything about my girl.”
“I don’t.” Chuck runs a hand through his hair; it’s past regulation length now, and it sticks up at weird angles as if he’s been pulling it out of stress. “The entire division’s still under blackout, nothing goes in and nothing goes out. I’m sorry, Valent, I wish I had better news for you.”
And then, by all reports, the Scouts start dropping like flies.
The Capitol doesn’t publicise it. To the general public, the Peacekeepers are a monolithic block; the white uniform is the white uniform is the white uniform, and that’s the way it should be. But the Peacekeepers know, and blackout or no Paul knows that Scouts squads are being sent out to the districts in an attempt to take out rebel leaders. And maybe they’re successful more often than not, but if they’re not, they always always die trying. Paul reads the reports and tries not to imagine Selene out there, fighting and maybe dying.
(It doesn’t work.)
--
When the war reaches Two, he's sent home. “It’s going to be messy,” Kerry says bluntly. Paul glares at him; Ramon would never have talked to him this way, but Ramon retired a few years back, and Kerry has never known him without the cane. “I need people here who can fight.”
“I can still fight,” Paul argues. “My leg’s hurt, not my aim.”
Kerry shakes his head. “And when we need to move fast, what then? No. Go home, Captain, that’s an order.” Paul clenches his teeth, and Kerry’s gaze thaws a fraction. “Nobody can say you haven’t done your duty, Paul. You’ve given your twenty and then some. It’s no dishonour to go now.”
He calls Julia as he boards the train out of the mountain. “I’m on my way back,” he says. “Kerry sent me home.”
Julia exhales; he hears it on the line. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I - know it must sting. But, Paul, I’m glad you’ll be safe.”
“As safe as any of us can be, anyway.”
He picks Kit up from school - the boy bounces circles around him in glee before Paul makes him hold his hand, and then he practically vibrates in place - and Paul lets his son’s excited chatter distract him from the war, and when they get home he picks Kit up and tosses him on the couch and tickles him until his laughter fills the air.
In the end, though, home isn’t safe. The fighting spreads across the district, sucking up rebels and loyalists and civilians alike - because for generations now, a good percentage of the general population was taught to fight even if they went on to other things. Julia comes home every day with an exhausted, haunted look on her face; Paul stops sending Kit to school entirely and keeps him home, and he’s far from the only one.
Because they’re losing. The rebels have soldiers, weapons, _hovercrafts_ - Paul wakes one day when a terrible, thundering boom fills the air, and he grabs his cane and bolts outside to see avalanches cascading down the sides of Eagle Pass.
“No,” he whispers.
Entire sections of the mountain collapse, leaving dents visible even from this distance - Paul has the wild, irrational thought that the depressions look just like Kit’s clay creations do when he presses his hand into them. The sections that aren’t caved in are covered by chunks of stone, rolling down the mountainside, and they don’t stop which means they keep going until they reach the bottom, clogging entrances and hangar doors and ventilation shafts -
There are thousands of people in there. Thousands.
Julia joins him, carrying Kit, and for a long moment they just stare in helpless silence.
“I have to go in,” Julia says, at long last. “They’ll need doctors, now more than ever.”
Paul nods and holds out his arm; Kit detaches from his mother’s neck and transfers to his father’s, and Julia kisses them both and leaves to get to work.
Kit is shaken; he doesn’t understand, but he’s picked up on his parents’ fear, and so Paul does his best to distract him. He tries turning on the television, only to see the rebels firebomb the Victor’s Village by hovercraft. Paul watches the coverage in horror.
Julia comes home late that night, exhausted and blood-splattered and practically spitting nails. “The Mockingjay showed up in the main square,” she tells him, contempt and helpless rage colouring every word. “Full costume, mic’ed, the works. Tried to tell us to hold our fire and join them because the rebels aren’t the enemy, the Capitol’s the enemy.” She runs her hands through her hair and lets out a short laugh. “Sure, because it’s really the Capitol that started this war and bombed Eagle Pass and killed all those people. What a load of bullshit.”
Paul winces. “What happened?” It was probably all over the television, if she was mic’ed - but he’s kept it firmly turned off ever since the Victor’s Village went up in flames. It’s like the Games; you can drive yourself crazy watching recaps all day when you can’t do a thing about it.
Julia grins bleakly. “Someone shot her. Turns out that costume’s got wicked armour built into it, though, more’s the pity.”
(In times like this, Paul is reminded that his wife might be a doctor now, but she was once a Career, too.)
It’s all downhill from there, though. The rebels up the ante, taking town after town in a hail of bullets. And then a few days later, Julia calls him at mid-morning and tells him to pack some things. “They’re evacuating the main town,” she says rapidly. “I’m on my way back - but if I don’t -”
“I’ll wait for you,” Paul says, and hangs up.
It’s not hard because it turns out Paul still remembers how to pack like an active-duty Peacekeeper, and he rolls up several changes of clothes, emergency supplies and some blankets into a camping pack. By the time Julia returns, he’s got Kit in a jacket and the pack on his back. (Kit peppers him with questions, and it kills Paul to answer “Where are we going, Daddy?” with “I don’t know,” but he doesn’t, he really doesn’t.)
When they join the horde of civilians streaming out of the town, it does not escape Paul’s notice that they’re being herded by soldiers in grey, not white.
They’ve lost, then.
“Move along, please.” A big soldier in grey looms over him, motioning with his rifle. Paul glares and grinds his cane into the ground; two weeks ago this boy would never dream of corralling him in this way -
“Not now,” Julia tells him in an undertone. She picks Kit up in her arms (over his protests that he’s a big boy now, Mom), and sweeps on ahead with her head held high, and Paul has no choice but to follow.
--
The Rebellion wins.
The Peacekeeper Corps are dissolved, but President Paylor, in her magnanimity, offers pardons to all the Peacekeepers who stayed loyal. If they lay down their arms, all will be forgiven; if they wish to join the new regime, they will be welcomed.
Paul takes the pardon, because what else can he do? He can’t fight the Rebellion all on his own; his friends have already tried and lost. Kerry and most of the others were lost in the bombing of Eagle Pass. But join Paylor - no. She would use the ashes of the Corps to build her new army and Paul will have none of it.
In recognition of his service, Panem’s new defence council awards him his retirement pension anyway. Paul considers telling the lot of them where exactly they can shove their money, but that would mean walking in to the new police headquarters, and he can’t bring himself to do that.
He - can’t, because he knows the moment he goes there he won’t be able to stop himself from asking about Selene, and he can’t bring himself to do that either.
Because Paul knows the statistics: the Scouts Division was decimated in the siege of the Capitol. Over twenty died defending President Snow alone; nearly that many again fell in skirmishes across the city, although not without taking out countless rebels with them. A mere handful are left alive, rotting in rebel cells. The odds that Selene made it are … slim.
Julia returns to work at the hospital. Her oath was to do no harm and to uphold the care of her patients, and regardless of who controls Panem she will continue to do so. But Paul’s oath was to serve the Capitol, and so he stays home and focuses on raising his son.
Perhaps he’ll take up hunting again.
--
The captured Scouts do not take the pardon. They choose to be tried as war criminals, murderers, torturers, whatever Paylor’s regime chooses to brand them as; they face the media circus with their hands cuffed behind their backs and their heads held high. Not one of them is over thirty-five. Paul aches with pride even as he weeps at the waste: District Two’s best and brightest children, strung up and hung out to dry as a symbol of the old regime’s cruelty.
Selene is not one of them.
After all is over and done, Paul finally works up the courage to go to the new district office. The young man behind the counter is vaguely familiar, and when he straightens and salutes and says, “Captain Valent, sir,” Paul twigs: Ray’s younger brother, Evan or something, he’d met the boy in his cadet rotation through District Two. Now he’s a corporal wearing Paylor’s insignia. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to run a check on your records,” Paul tells him, slowly, carefully. He rehearsed this on the way in; that’s the only reason the words aren’t all sticking in his throat. “A - my daughter. She was in the Corps. Before.”
Evan nods. “Name, sir?”
“Selene.”
“Selene Valent?”
Paul closes his eyes. “Just Selene, I think.”
“No - that’s in the system.” Evan’s eyes are fixed on his screen, and so he misses Paul’s disbelieving, incredulous look. “Officer 73-2-158, Selene Valent, Scouts Division …” the boy clears his throat, and Paul’s heart plummets. “Killed in action. I’m sorry, sir.”
After that, Paul doesn’t remember much. He remembers thanking the boy - not his fault, he’s just the messenger - remembers accepting his condolences and the packet containing Selene’s service record, and walking back out into the sunlight.
It’s a lovely day. How … incongruous.
When he gets home, Julia takes one look at him and the blood drains from her face. Paul holds out his arms, and Julia falls into his embrace and bursts into tears.
“Mom!” Kit appears, alarmed. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
Julia inhales and scrubs her eyes, trying to get herself under control, but Paul - Paul is numb. He has lost his daughter for the third and final time. Tears will not suffice here.
And he has to be strong for his son.
He kneels and pulls Kit to him, hugging him close. “Your sister is dead,” he says, closing his eyes. There will be no softening this blow. “Her name was Selene. She was in the Peacekeeper Corps, and she - died a hero.”
After that, he takes Kit to the Wall. District Two has erected a monument in memory of the fallen: a granite wall, taller than Paul, etched with the names and numbers of every Peacekeeper who fell in the war regardless of who they fought for. The other districts mutter about honouring traitors, but every single one of them was a child of District Two, and it’s only fitting.
(The Victors are at the top, an unbroken line of names that begins with RONAN and ends with PETRA. Those are the only ones not laser-etched into the granite; Enobaria chiselled them in herself.)
He tells Kit about Selene as a child; he tells him about the Centre and the Hunger Games and Volunteering; he tells him about how she visited once before going on to join the Corps. He tells him about how she gave her life to defend her country, and how that makes her a hero regardless of who won. And Kit listens, and he holds his father’s hand, and he traces the letters marking the name of the sister he’ll never know.
Epilogue
Thirteen Years Later
“Happy birthday,” Kit tells Selene, touching the Wall. “I brought you flowers.”
It’s become a tradition of sorts, over the last few years, for him to come here on her birthday. The first time he did it, he hadn’t told Dad until after, worried about what the old man might think, but he had only blinked and said, “I think she would like that.”
So now he comes every year, bringing a handful of blue forget-me-nots.
“I’m going to Three in a few weeks,” Kit says, sinking down on a low bench. He has the place to himself, which is nice; not many people bother to pay their respects this early on a crisp December morning. “Just got the news at graduation. I’m to have a two-year stint there with a company that designs skyscrapers. Skyscrapers!” Kit laughs, softly. “Imagine me, a boy from Two, designing buildings that tall. My going-away party was last week. Just a small group, Mom and Dad and Uncle Ramon’s family. Some friends. Mom made a cake, and they made me make a speech, and I think Dad almost cried.”
It won’t be easy on the old man, letting his second child go, even knowing he’ll come back. But Paul Valent has always maintained that Kit is his own man, and that he should follow his heart; he was the one to encourage Kit’s interest in architecture, to buy him clay and sketching paper and stay up late at night helping him put models together. Kit has always been closer to his mother, but it’s because their temperaments are closer, not due to any lack of attention on his father’s part.
He thinks of the first time he came here, the day Dad came home and told him his sister was dead. He had been eight at the time. He’s twenty-one now, which makes him a year younger than his sister was when she died; soon he will be older than she ever was. Isn’t that an odd thought.
Kit kicks at the snow and talks, softly, his voice echoing off the granite wall. He tells Selene about school, about staying up all night putting the finishing touches on his model before graduation. He tells her about the sculpture he made for Mom for her birthday, a delicate twist of spun glass and obsidian. He tells her about how Dad took him aside, after the party, to give him one final gift: his old service pistol, the gun he’d learnt to fire when he was twelve, out on the trails up behind the house. “Just in case,” the old man had said, winking. “I know you kids have those fancy tasers in Three.” Kit had laughed and hugged him.
He doesn’t say, but he thinks about, his favourite memento of his sister: a beaded leather bracelet, threaded through with copper. She already knows about that. He hopes she would be happy he has it.
The sun’s risen fully now, and people have started drifting in in ones and twos. “Okay,” Kit says, standing up and brushing snow off his coat. “I guess it’s time to go. But I’ll be back next year, I promise.”
An old woman is close enough to overhear, and she glances at him. Kit inclines his head politely. “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning.” She smiles at him, faint but genuine. “It’s nice to see you young people paying your respects. If you don’t mind me asking …”
Kit is used to the question. It’s usually phrased less gently; they usually assume, given his age, that he’s lost a parent or grandparent. “My sister,” he says, and is unsurprised to see her startled look. “She fell in the siege of the Capitol.”
“I’m sorry.” Genuine regret colours her voice. “Were you close?”
“No,” Kit says, honestly. He’s read his sister’s service record, has heard their parents’ stories of her childhood - but he’s only ever met her once, when he was too young to remember, and his mother still gets a haunted look on her face when she talks about that day. He won’t claim to have been close to her, or even known her. “But I would have liked the chance to be.”
The old woman only nods.
Kit touches his fist to his chest. “Mountains and earth.”
“Mountains and earth.”
Characters: OCs (and tiny cameo Brutus)
Rating: R
Warnings: character death. A lot of character death. IN CANON, EVERYONE DIES. I’M SORRY.
Summary: Paul, an officer in the Peacekeeper Corps, is an ex-Career who has dedicated his life to serving his district and his country. He swore an oath to the Capitol and he will uphold it to his dying breath. But watching his daughter Selene do the same is … harder.
This is a story of the Rebellion from the other side, told through the eyes of a soldier, husband, and father.
A/N: Contains headcanon stolen from lorataprose regarding District Two’s Career system, but none of it is necessary to follow this story.
(One day I’m gonna write a canon divergence version where nobody dies, because that's the real universe, dammit.)
1: The Centre
Paul has a good life, all things considered.
He was a Centre kid back in the day, and while he wasn’t anywhere close to Volunteer, he got through his Field Exam and made the transfer to the Peacekeeping Academy at age sixteen. He’d also turned out to make a far better Peacekeeper than tribute trainee, too, and even though his active-duty career got cut short by that fugitive from Four shooting a harpoon through his leg, the Corps looks after its own and he was transferred back to Two for treatment, rehabilitation, and - when it became clear he’d walk with a limp for the rest of his life - to work in the district office.
And he has Julia. She was a doctor at the hospital they’d put him in - not his doctor, that crosses a line - but they’d met while he was in rehab, the pretty dark-haired doctor with a presence that could light up the room, and he’d made sure he was discharged before asking her out. He was so nervous, but somehow she said yes, and they were married within two years. Within another year, she was pregnant.
Before their daughter was born, Paul didn’t think he could love anyone as much as Julia, but Selene had him wrapped around his little finger from the moment he laid eyes on her.
The only problem was, he doesn’t really know what to do with a child. It made Julia laugh, how thoroughly and yet cluelessly Paul dotes on their daughter, but he can’t help it. He’s an only child, his only cousins several years older, and - well, basically, the youngest kids he ever interacts with regularly are eighteen-year-old cadets on their training rotation. He has no idea what to do with a baby.
It gets easier as Selene grows and develops a personality of her own. She’s a wild one, his daughter, always wanting to run off and get into all sorts of mischief - Paul learns he needs to take a firm hand with her, because if she so much as smells wavering on his part it’s all over - but she’s so bright and eager and curious about everything, too. When he’s home from work she’ll follow him around incessantly and pepper him with questions, or sit on his lap and demand stories, or steal his badge and make him play Peacekeepers and robbers.
(Which is not a real game, he’s pretty sure, but somehow he ends up hiding behind the couch anyway as Selene directs the ‘hunt’ for ‘robbers’ in a loud whisper.)
“It’s because she idolises you,” Julia tells him, one day, full of fond exasperation. “She wants to be just like you when she grows up. It’s not a bad thing.”
Paul laughs and kisses her shoulder, because it’s - amazing, it really is. He’s never thought of himself as a role model of any kind for anyone, and yet here he is. Selene looks up from the rug where she’s playing and grins, bright and sunny, and holds her arms out to be picked up - so of course Paul does, and the next hour is spent tossing his little girl through the air just to hear her laugh.
--
They enrol Selene at the Centre when she’s seven, because that’s what you do - Julia was a Centre kid herself too, though she left before Residential. Everyone spends at least a couple of years there. Selene takes to that too like she does anything, and every day she comes back home grinning and full of excited stories about everything.
Julia worries about that, though - the stories. They’re not just about how she climbed the ropes today or how her team won dodgeball, they’re also about how she stole a ball from another girl and got into a fight, or how a bigger boy got into her face so she broke his nose. Paul doesn’t think much of it, all the kids get into scrapes when they’re there - Paul himself did, back in the day - but Julia does.
“I just don’t want her to become a monster,” Julia says, biting her lip. “And I know - she’s only eight, she’s just little. But.”
“I think she’s just bored,” Paul tells her. Selene’s a good kid, but restless, and the Centre gives her an outlet for all her leftover physical energy. “School’s just not interesting, I know the feeling.”
“I suppose,” Julia sighs, but the worry-lines don’t smooth out.
“You think maybe I’m not spending enough time at home?” Paul ventures, after a moment. Selene acts up when he’s not around to tell her to behave; just the other day he had to give her a firm talking-to for back-talking her mother. Work’s been busy lately, since he got promoted and Ed retired, and he hasn’t been around as much as he’d like. “Maybe I should take her out camping or something.”
Julia laughs. “Paul, I love you, but neither of you have the patience for camping. Selene would run off and set things on fire, and you’d help by chucking branches in her direction.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be able to catch her,” Paul concedes, grinning. “Okay, okay, I’ll think of something else.”
“Do.” Julia stands on her tiptoes and kisses him. “She misses you.”
By the time Selene comes home proudly showing off her second black strand, Paul’s hit on something that she might like. His daughter has been pleading with him for years to let her try his gun, and he’s always said no before, but she’s nine now and they’ll be starting her on weapons soon if they haven’t already. Paul figures he might as well give her a head start.
“Let’s go outside and celebrate,” Paul tells her, ruffling her hair. Selene scrunches up her face at him, but he pulls his pistol belt on and winks and she lights up and follows him out like a puppy.
Paul makes her go through full the whole safety briefing first (Julia insisted; she made the very valid point that if he was going to let Selene fire a gun he had better make sure she knew to be safe about it.). And wonder of wonders, Selene actually sits through the whole lecture, and when Paul quizzes her she recites it all back perfectly.
The wonders of bribery, Paul thinks, ruffling her hair again.
He shows her how to hold and aim a gun properly, both his hands on her little ones - he’s leaned his cane against the wall, he doesn’t need it while standing - and there’s a decent amount of draw, so he helps her pull the trigger too, but you wouldn’t know it from her delighted laughter when the gun goes off and hits the empty can he’s balanced on the fence.
“Just like that,” Paul tells her, and Selene tilts her head all the way back and grins up at him. “Wanna go again?”
“Yes please,” Selene says.
This time he lets her pull the trigger herself - she takes three fingers to do it, frowning fiercely in concentration, and it’s a good thing Paul’s still holding the gun too or that would pull it way out of alignment - and lets out a happy whoop as it hits the target again.
It’s the best afternoon they’ve had in a while. He was right, he does need to spend more time at home; Selene’s already taller than he remembers, she’s up to his chest, and he’s missed the way she chatters on about something that excites her. He picks her up and slings her over his shoulder, and she shrieks with laughter; very soon she will be too old to be picked up like this. She’s grown up so fast already.
All too soon Julia calls them in for dinner and Selene pouts a little, but, wonder of wonders, doesn’t pitch a fit. She even remembers to check that the pistol’s not loaded before putting it away. Yes, this was an excellent idea.
--
It becomes their thing on weekends, just the two of them and the beat-up cans on the fence. Sometimes if Selene’s been good Paul will take her out to the trails and let her shoot branches off trees. And when the snow starts to fall, Paul gets permission from the Head Peacekeeper to bring her in to the shooting range. (Or, more precisely, when he mentioned to Ramon that he was teaching his kid to shoot and she was getting pretty good, the man had laughed uproariously and said, “Bring her in and set her on the recruits. They’re sloppy, it’ll do them good to get their asses handed to them by a nine-year-old.”)
She charms all his colleagues from the get-go, and Paul has never grinned as wide as he has to see old Ted - grizzled, scowling, no-nonsense Ted - give in to her demands for a go on his revolver, or the soft smile on the man’s face when he said yes and Selene flung her arms around his waist.
The years go by, and Paul continues to take Selene out on long hikes and his colleagues continue to teach her how to handle all kinds of weaponry. For her eleventh birthday Helen teaches her how to use a rifle, it’s far too big for her but she hits the target anyway, to the cheers of everyone in the range.
(They tape a picture of Selene holding a rifle that’s absurdly big for her to the door to the weapons locker, captioned “Still A Better Shot Than You”. The first time Paul sees it, he laughs for ten minutes straight.)
But it doesn’t work, not the way Paul and Julia hoped. Yes, it gives her an outlet and something else to focus on rather than the Centre - school isn’t cutting it, her grades are decent, but all Paul’s efforts to encourage her to work harder fall on deaf ears - but the thing is. The thing is. His little girl’s wild, always has been, and the thing with the Centre is that it gives wild kids structure but it also encourages them. Paul had hoped being at the Centre would calm her down a little, but it hasn’t, it’s just channelling her energy.
On one memorable occasion, Selene comes back with a long gash down her forearm that required five stitches. “It’s fine, Mom,” Selene had said, exasperated, at Julia’s shocked questioning. “The doctors said it’ll heal right up.”
“Watch your tone,” Paul says, reprovingly. “Selene, honey, we’re just concerned. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Selene says, but her eyes flicker - not guiltily, exactly, but she’s lying and she knows it. Paul folds his arms and glares, and finally Selene huffs. “Some of the twelves thought it’d be funny to pick on us, and we didn’t let them. That’s all.”
“With a knife?” Julia says incredulously.
“One of them had one,” Selene says, entirely unrepentant. “We took it from him in the end, though. The trainers gave us cake.”
Julia doesn’t quite fling her hands up, but it’s a close thing.
“I don’t like it,” Julia tells him, quietly but fiercely, that night. “It’s not working, I think we should pull her out.”
“She was attacked and defended herself,” Paul argues, without entirely knowing why. He can read between the lines and in most of her stories Selene’s either the troublemaker or the ringleader of troublemakers - the aggression wasn’t as one-sided as she describes, he’s pretty sure.
Julia glares at him. “Sure. And I’m President Snow.”
Paul tries again. “It’s - she’s just restless. She needs an outlet, that’s all. I used to be the same way when I was little. It’ll be fine, Julia, you’ll see.”
And - she does, that’s the thing. Selene’s a model student at school, good grades and behaviour, and around the range she always minds him and the others. It’s just in the Centre that she gets into scraps, where it’s safe and there are a ton of trainers and doctors around for when the kids run up against their limits, so that’s okay.
But then Selene starts disappearing in the evenings, sometimes, or taking longer than usual to come back from the Centre, and when she comes back she has a weird light in her eyes. When asked, she just shrugs. More disturbingly, when they go hiking, Selene starts asking about when he goes hunting with his buddies, if she can come, how hard it is to shoot moving targets… Paul warily concedes that it’s harder, and he introduces her to the moving targets range at the district office, a series of targets of varying shapes and sizes, suspended on wires and shot through the air. Selene grins, fiercely, and asks for a pistol.
He doesn’t know how to reach her, anymore, and he tries anything and everything he can think of. He even brings her hunting with Ramon and Helen, once, over Julia’s objections - which turn out to be well-founded, when Selene nails a goose on her first go and scampers over to picks it up with a wide, victorious grin. Ramon laughs and congratulates her, but Helen shoots Paul a quick, unreadable look which he pretends not to see.
He knows he’s losing her.
Then she turns thirteen, and he runs out of time. Selene comes back home one day with the paperwork for Residential, and Paul’s little girl meets his gaze with his dark blue eyes and tells him if he doesn’t sign it she’ll just find another way.
“I’m sorry,” Paul whispers to Julia that night as she sobs into a pillow. “I’m so sorry.”
2: The Corps
Once Selene leaves, the quiet is agonising.
Paul never realised before how much he loved just having her around. The clatter of footsteps, her laugh, even how she always banged doors open despite Paul and Julia’s admonishing because she gets impatient and forgets. Julia keeps shooting haunted looks at the door to Selene’s bedroom, closed firmly and untouched since she left; Paul keeps setting the table for three, and has to hurry to remove the last set before Julia notices.
(The empty place is worse.)
They leave Selene’s room alone for a whole year, but when she’s fourteen and the stipend still keeps coming, Paul can’t ignore it anymore. He knows how this goes; she’s in Residential now and if she gets cut - when - if - the Centre won’t just send her home, they’ll transfer her to the post-Residential dorms. And if she comes back, she won’t want all the miscellaneous stuff from her childhood, all the books and toys and games and the little air-gun that Paul gave her when she was ten.
He should box it all up, give it away or put it in storage or whatever, but the moment he tries - the moment he opens the door and walks into his daughter’s room - it hits him all over again.
Julia finds him there an hour later, kneeling on the floor with his head in his hands. “Oh, Paul,” she says softly, sinking to the ground next to him and wrapping her arms around his waist.
“I miss her,” Paul says, the words wrenching themselves from him unbidden. “I - it’s been a year, this stuff’s all just collecting dust, I figured I’d go through it and sort it all out. But I can’t.”
Julia doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just buries her face in his neck. “Don’t do this to yourself, my love,” she murmurs. “It’s not your fault. Don’t beat yourself up over what can’t be changed.”
“But it is my fault.” Paul closes his eyes. “I kept her in, I said it was fine, I even took her hunting. And I just, I can’t.”
Now the tears do fall, and Julia makes a soft sound that punches him right in the gut and shifts, pulling him close and cradling his head in her arms. He fists his hands in her blouse and cries into her neck.
They do it together, in the end. Selene didn’t take much with her, and her remaining things are a bit of a mess, miscellaneous trinkets jammed into drawers and the back of shelves. It takes all night - more than once Paul or Julia pick something up that triggers a memory and they have to stop - but at long last they’ve gotten through it all, they’ve kept what they want to keep and boxed up and labelled the rest.
“I’ll take ‘em down to the Peacehome later today,” Paul says finally, tired and - not happy, exactly, he hasn’t been happy for a while, but fulfilled. It’s like they’ve finally lanced the wound and now it has a chance to heal. “They can always use the supplies.”
Julia shakes her head. “Tomorrow,” she tells him. “We’ve done enough for now. Come to bed?”
He does, and afterwards they hold each other and watch the sunrise through their window.
--
A few months later, Julia brings up the topic of having more children.
She’s always wanted more than one, Paul knows, it’s just that Selene was a difficult pregnancy and Julia had been confined to bed for the last month, and they’d agreed it might not be a good idea to try for more. And to have another child now feels like - well, it feels like they’re trying to replace Selene, and that doesn’t sit well with Paul.
“I don’t want to _replace_ her,” Julia says fiercely, when he tells her this. “How can you say that? It’s just … too quiet, with just the two of us. They’ve been some breakthroughs with obstetrics in the past few years, and we’re still young. We could have two more, or three.”
Paul isn’t so sure; it’s not that he doesn’t want more children, it’s that he doesn’t think he can handle losing another one. But Julia is determined, and so he lets himself be convinced.
Kit is a difficult birth. They both make it, but barely, and after they put him in Julia’s arms - after they let Paul cradle him and it’s just like Selene all over again, he looks at the precious human being he and Julia have made and forgets to breathe - the doctors pull him aside and tell him in no uncertain terms that having any more children will kill Julia.
“I know she wanted this one,” the doctor says, and oh right, it’s Hazel, one of Julia’s friends. “But you can’t let her talk you into having any more. We nearly lost her.”
Paul closes his eyes. He can’t imagine losing Julia, too. “I won’t,” he says. “You have my word.”
Kit is wonderful child. He’s adorable, full of energy and affection, and Paul loves him wholeheartedly and carefully does not even think about comparing him to Selene at the same age. Sometimes it’s unavoidable; he’s got Paul’s eyes too, and Julia’s smile, and when Paul tosses him in the air his delighted laugh is just like Selene’s used to be. But he’s his own person, their son, with his own likes and dislikes and personality, and he doesn’t deserve to grow up in the shadow of his missing sister.
They give Kit the spare room and turn Selene’s old room into the new spare, for that very reason.
His son grows, and Julia laughs and smiles, and the hole in Paul’s heart doesn’t heal, exactly, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.
--
Then the summer of the 72nd Games arrives. Julia’s determined to treat it like any other year, but Paul can’t. The stipend comes in every month, more and more each year, and that means Selene’s still in the running; and still being in the running means there’s every chance Paul will see his little girl up on stage in this year’s Reaping.
He can’t treat it like any other year because it’s not.
“You’re an idiot,” Julia tells him, when he tells her he wants to go to the main square for the Reaping. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
“I have to,” Paul says. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to convince, her or him, and he swallows. “Julia - if it’s her, I have to know, I have to see her.”
Julia sighs. “Alright,” she says. “Then I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to -”
“If you do, I do.” Julia gives him a small, sad smile. “Hazel can look after Kit for the day, he’s too young for that mess, but I’ll be there with you. I’m not letting you go there alone.”
And Paul hears what she doesn’t say - if it’s Selene then she doesn’t deserve to be distracted by a brother she doesn’t know she has - but to say that acknowledges the possibility and he can’t do that, so he just squeezes Julia’s hand in thanks.
When Paul and Julia get there, Paul remembers why he usually makes the reverse trek and watches the Reaping from the nearest satellite location instead of the main square. It’s packed, full of kids who were drawn in the pre-Reaping and anxious parents who know it’s not going to be theirs but are worried anyway - the 53rd Games might be nearly two decades past now but it could always happen again, the Volunteers exist through the Capitol’s benevolence, never forget - and, yes, the Seniors in a line at the back of the square, shoulder to shoulder with their left hands over their right wrists.
(Paul remembers that pose. He’d only stood in the Senior ranks once, over thirty years ago now, but he’s never forgotten.)
They call the boys first, this year, and Paul carefully does not burst with impatience as a husky eighteen-year-old calls out and mounts the stage. And then they call the girl, and the escort calls for volunteers, and -
“I volunteer!”
Paul can’t move. By his side, Julia is gripping his hand tight enough to bruise. The children part to let the Volunteer walk up but Paul can’t see from where he’s standing, he doesn’t want to see, he needs to see - he catches a flash of red hair moving through the crowd -
Selene’s hair is dark. Paul’s heart hammers in his chest.
And yes - the cameras zoom on the girl as she mounts the stage and it’s not his little girl, surely it’s not, not unless the Centre does bonesculpting as well as hair dye - but it’s been five years, who knows what she looks like now, and his memories are of a little girl grinning at him over a too-big rifle -
“What’s your name?” the escort coos.
“Petra,” the girl says, and Paul closes his eyes against the tide of awful, overwhelming, crushing relief.
And, fast on its heels, shame. It’s not his daughter but it’s someone’s daughter, and that someone will be going home tonight and locking the door and holing up in front of the television anyway. Two’s Career program means children and parents the district over can take tesserae without fear, and it provides structure and a base on which Panem’s Peacekeepers are trained, but the two tributes that go in are still someone’s children.
(It’s an honour. And yet.)
“Let’s go home,” Julia tells him, and Paul lets her tug him away.
When they get home Paul picks Kit up and squeezes him so tight the boy squeaks.
--
Petra wins the 72nd Hunger Games. Paul’s glad; she’s not his daughter but it could’ve been his girl up there in her place, and he was rooting for her to win. Taking that mace to the hip must have hurt like a bitch (Paul rubs his own leg in memory), but she limps on stage for the finale anyway and fields questions from Caesar like the professional she is, and sits through the recap with barely a blink.
Paul’s impressed.
He and Julia win tickets to see Petra when her Victory Tour returns to District Two, and Paul puts on his best dress whites and shakes the hand of the girl who went in in his daughter’s place. “Congratulations on your victory,” he says, inclining his head in respect. “And welcome back.”
“Thank you,” Petra says. Brutus towers at her shoulder, over a foot taller than his young Victor, and Paul nods at him as well and touches his fist to his chest in a salute before transferring his cane back from his left hand.
Petra’s gaze flickers to his cane - yes, Paul thinks, I have one too - but he doesn’t comment and neither does she, and there are other people waiting to speak to her and so he and Julia circulate away, her hand warm on his arm.
After that, Paul thinks it’s over. Selene’s safe; the Centre will take care of her, and they’ll help her find a job and a place and she’ll be okay.
Then he comes home one day and Julia’s agitated and twitchy, and she sends Kit out to play with the neighbours before dinner and turns to him. Paul only has a moment to wonder what happened before Julia says, “Selene was here today.”
And. Just. Nowhere in Paul’s wildest imagination did he expect Selene to show up, here, now. He stares. “What?”
“You heard me.” Julia blows out a breath and crosses her arms, rubbing her hands over her upper arms as if cold, even though it’s the middle of spring. Without thinking about it, Paul steps close and covers her hands with his. Julia shoots him a pained smile. “Said she got out, said they’d offered her a place in the Academy. Asked Kit’s name. Then she said goodbye and walked away.”
Shit. Paul closes his eyes. Shit, his little girl came back, and he wasn’t here, and she saw Kit and what she must have thought -
“I should’ve -” Julia’s voice cracks. “I didn’t know what to say to her, Paul, I never did, but I should’ve said something - I’m sorry -”
“It’s okay.” It’s not okay, but there’s nothing to be gained by recriminations now, and so Paul just hugs his wife close. Julia clings to his chest. “It’ll be okay.”
3: The War
After that, Paul resolves to keep an eye on Selene from a distance. He’s not on the Academy staff, but if she makes it through - and she will, if Paul knows his girl at all - her name will be on the rolls soon enough. And yes, when next spring’s class graduates, Selene’s name is at the top of the list, assigned to the Scouts division in the Capitol.
(It doesn’t surprise Paul that she’s left ‘Valent’ off her paperwork, but it’s like a little knife in his heart anyway.)
Kit turns six the next year, and this time, Paul hesitates. “We don’t have to enrol him at the Centre next year,” Paul says, one night after he’s gone to bed. His boy’s a good kid, bright and rambunctious, and he’ll do well there - but. But.
Julia bites her lip, and Paul knows the same thoughts are running through her head. It’s unheard of for people of their set to not send their kids to the Centre, at least for a couple of years - Ted’s eleven-year-old daughter is in, and Ramon’s son will be starting this summer. If they withhold Kit there’ll be a lot of questions and raised eyebrows. (Kit himself will ask, if his peers start going to the Centre after school and he doesn’t. And he knows he had an older sister but not that she almost made Volunteer, because they don’t want to put that on him yet; they’d have to explain that if they withhold him.)
But Paul remembers telling Julia it’d be fine to leave Selene in, and he promised himself he’d never compare Kit to Selene but he doesn’t think he can stand in that square again in twelve years and wonder if it’ll be his son on the podium.
“If we pull him out at nine, it should be fine,” Julia says eventually. “It’s still just an after-school sports program at that point, and he’ll learn a lot. We shouldn’t deny him the opportunity.”
Paul nods. Julia was in the Centre too, though her parents pulled her out at eleven, and she credits it for her skill with a scalpel and how she can stand up to the most distraught of patient’s relatives. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s do that.”
But they never get the chance, because the 75th Games happens and the entire country rises up in rebellion. Two holds firm - Two always holds firm - but it’s hard, so hard. Julia practically lives at the hospital, and Paul pulls double shifts and issues orders and sends good kids to the other districts to keep order or die trying.
And in the midst of it all, Selene disappears.
Paul had been following her career - not too closely, it’d attract attention if a district officer from Two started accessing the Scouts Division records - but his buddy knows someone in the quartermaster’s office in the Capitol, and every so often he’ll pass along a tidbit or two. Selene’s squad is in the Capitol this quarter; Selene’s squad brought in some runaways and got a commendation; Selene’s squad was part of Snow’s security detail for that event last month and it went fine.
He doesn’t even wonder at first, is the awful part. The Scouts go into comms blackout before the Games - they’re too involved, Chuck explains, and if they’re allowed to talk they might leak something - but usually by the time the Victor’s announced, they’re allowed to talk again, and news resumes. This year’s a mess, with Twelve’s Katniss Everdeen blows out the force field, and then all coverage halts until her district partner comes on television days later and calls for a cease-fire - so Paul doesn’t expect to hear any word for a while - but then a week passes, and a month, and still nothing.
He takes a risk and gets his buddy to call Chuck directly from his console. “What is it now, Ray?” Chuck demands, a harried look in his eyes. “I told you, we can’t get another drop until -” His eyes narrow when he recognises Paul. “What -”
“I’m not asking you for anything classified,” Paul says, in a rush. “I just wanna know if you heard anything about my girl.”
“I don’t.” Chuck runs a hand through his hair; it’s past regulation length now, and it sticks up at weird angles as if he’s been pulling it out of stress. “The entire division’s still under blackout, nothing goes in and nothing goes out. I’m sorry, Valent, I wish I had better news for you.”
And then, by all reports, the Scouts start dropping like flies.
The Capitol doesn’t publicise it. To the general public, the Peacekeepers are a monolithic block; the white uniform is the white uniform is the white uniform, and that’s the way it should be. But the Peacekeepers know, and blackout or no Paul knows that Scouts squads are being sent out to the districts in an attempt to take out rebel leaders. And maybe they’re successful more often than not, but if they’re not, they always always die trying. Paul reads the reports and tries not to imagine Selene out there, fighting and maybe dying.
(It doesn’t work.)
--
When the war reaches Two, he's sent home. “It’s going to be messy,” Kerry says bluntly. Paul glares at him; Ramon would never have talked to him this way, but Ramon retired a few years back, and Kerry has never known him without the cane. “I need people here who can fight.”
“I can still fight,” Paul argues. “My leg’s hurt, not my aim.”
Kerry shakes his head. “And when we need to move fast, what then? No. Go home, Captain, that’s an order.” Paul clenches his teeth, and Kerry’s gaze thaws a fraction. “Nobody can say you haven’t done your duty, Paul. You’ve given your twenty and then some. It’s no dishonour to go now.”
He calls Julia as he boards the train out of the mountain. “I’m on my way back,” he says. “Kerry sent me home.”
Julia exhales; he hears it on the line. “I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I - know it must sting. But, Paul, I’m glad you’ll be safe.”
“As safe as any of us can be, anyway.”
He picks Kit up from school - the boy bounces circles around him in glee before Paul makes him hold his hand, and then he practically vibrates in place - and Paul lets his son’s excited chatter distract him from the war, and when they get home he picks Kit up and tosses him on the couch and tickles him until his laughter fills the air.
In the end, though, home isn’t safe. The fighting spreads across the district, sucking up rebels and loyalists and civilians alike - because for generations now, a good percentage of the general population was taught to fight even if they went on to other things. Julia comes home every day with an exhausted, haunted look on her face; Paul stops sending Kit to school entirely and keeps him home, and he’s far from the only one.
Because they’re losing. The rebels have soldiers, weapons, _hovercrafts_ - Paul wakes one day when a terrible, thundering boom fills the air, and he grabs his cane and bolts outside to see avalanches cascading down the sides of Eagle Pass.
“No,” he whispers.
Entire sections of the mountain collapse, leaving dents visible even from this distance - Paul has the wild, irrational thought that the depressions look just like Kit’s clay creations do when he presses his hand into them. The sections that aren’t caved in are covered by chunks of stone, rolling down the mountainside, and they don’t stop which means they keep going until they reach the bottom, clogging entrances and hangar doors and ventilation shafts -
There are thousands of people in there. Thousands.
Julia joins him, carrying Kit, and for a long moment they just stare in helpless silence.
“I have to go in,” Julia says, at long last. “They’ll need doctors, now more than ever.”
Paul nods and holds out his arm; Kit detaches from his mother’s neck and transfers to his father’s, and Julia kisses them both and leaves to get to work.
Kit is shaken; he doesn’t understand, but he’s picked up on his parents’ fear, and so Paul does his best to distract him. He tries turning on the television, only to see the rebels firebomb the Victor’s Village by hovercraft. Paul watches the coverage in horror.
Julia comes home late that night, exhausted and blood-splattered and practically spitting nails. “The Mockingjay showed up in the main square,” she tells him, contempt and helpless rage colouring every word. “Full costume, mic’ed, the works. Tried to tell us to hold our fire and join them because the rebels aren’t the enemy, the Capitol’s the enemy.” She runs her hands through her hair and lets out a short laugh. “Sure, because it’s really the Capitol that started this war and bombed Eagle Pass and killed all those people. What a load of bullshit.”
Paul winces. “What happened?” It was probably all over the television, if she was mic’ed - but he’s kept it firmly turned off ever since the Victor’s Village went up in flames. It’s like the Games; you can drive yourself crazy watching recaps all day when you can’t do a thing about it.
Julia grins bleakly. “Someone shot her. Turns out that costume’s got wicked armour built into it, though, more’s the pity.”
(In times like this, Paul is reminded that his wife might be a doctor now, but she was once a Career, too.)
It’s all downhill from there, though. The rebels up the ante, taking town after town in a hail of bullets. And then a few days later, Julia calls him at mid-morning and tells him to pack some things. “They’re evacuating the main town,” she says rapidly. “I’m on my way back - but if I don’t -”
“I’ll wait for you,” Paul says, and hangs up.
It’s not hard because it turns out Paul still remembers how to pack like an active-duty Peacekeeper, and he rolls up several changes of clothes, emergency supplies and some blankets into a camping pack. By the time Julia returns, he’s got Kit in a jacket and the pack on his back. (Kit peppers him with questions, and it kills Paul to answer “Where are we going, Daddy?” with “I don’t know,” but he doesn’t, he really doesn’t.)
When they join the horde of civilians streaming out of the town, it does not escape Paul’s notice that they’re being herded by soldiers in grey, not white.
They’ve lost, then.
“Move along, please.” A big soldier in grey looms over him, motioning with his rifle. Paul glares and grinds his cane into the ground; two weeks ago this boy would never dream of corralling him in this way -
“Not now,” Julia tells him in an undertone. She picks Kit up in her arms (over his protests that he’s a big boy now, Mom), and sweeps on ahead with her head held high, and Paul has no choice but to follow.
--
The Rebellion wins.
The Peacekeeper Corps are dissolved, but President Paylor, in her magnanimity, offers pardons to all the Peacekeepers who stayed loyal. If they lay down their arms, all will be forgiven; if they wish to join the new regime, they will be welcomed.
Paul takes the pardon, because what else can he do? He can’t fight the Rebellion all on his own; his friends have already tried and lost. Kerry and most of the others were lost in the bombing of Eagle Pass. But join Paylor - no. She would use the ashes of the Corps to build her new army and Paul will have none of it.
In recognition of his service, Panem’s new defence council awards him his retirement pension anyway. Paul considers telling the lot of them where exactly they can shove their money, but that would mean walking in to the new police headquarters, and he can’t bring himself to do that.
He - can’t, because he knows the moment he goes there he won’t be able to stop himself from asking about Selene, and he can’t bring himself to do that either.
Because Paul knows the statistics: the Scouts Division was decimated in the siege of the Capitol. Over twenty died defending President Snow alone; nearly that many again fell in skirmishes across the city, although not without taking out countless rebels with them. A mere handful are left alive, rotting in rebel cells. The odds that Selene made it are … slim.
Julia returns to work at the hospital. Her oath was to do no harm and to uphold the care of her patients, and regardless of who controls Panem she will continue to do so. But Paul’s oath was to serve the Capitol, and so he stays home and focuses on raising his son.
Perhaps he’ll take up hunting again.
--
The captured Scouts do not take the pardon. They choose to be tried as war criminals, murderers, torturers, whatever Paylor’s regime chooses to brand them as; they face the media circus with their hands cuffed behind their backs and their heads held high. Not one of them is over thirty-five. Paul aches with pride even as he weeps at the waste: District Two’s best and brightest children, strung up and hung out to dry as a symbol of the old regime’s cruelty.
Selene is not one of them.
After all is over and done, Paul finally works up the courage to go to the new district office. The young man behind the counter is vaguely familiar, and when he straightens and salutes and says, “Captain Valent, sir,” Paul twigs: Ray’s younger brother, Evan or something, he’d met the boy in his cadet rotation through District Two. Now he’s a corporal wearing Paylor’s insignia. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to run a check on your records,” Paul tells him, slowly, carefully. He rehearsed this on the way in; that’s the only reason the words aren’t all sticking in his throat. “A - my daughter. She was in the Corps. Before.”
Evan nods. “Name, sir?”
“Selene.”
“Selene Valent?”
Paul closes his eyes. “Just Selene, I think.”
“No - that’s in the system.” Evan’s eyes are fixed on his screen, and so he misses Paul’s disbelieving, incredulous look. “Officer 73-2-158, Selene Valent, Scouts Division …” the boy clears his throat, and Paul’s heart plummets. “Killed in action. I’m sorry, sir.”
After that, Paul doesn’t remember much. He remembers thanking the boy - not his fault, he’s just the messenger - remembers accepting his condolences and the packet containing Selene’s service record, and walking back out into the sunlight.
It’s a lovely day. How … incongruous.
When he gets home, Julia takes one look at him and the blood drains from her face. Paul holds out his arms, and Julia falls into his embrace and bursts into tears.
“Mom!” Kit appears, alarmed. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
Julia inhales and scrubs her eyes, trying to get herself under control, but Paul - Paul is numb. He has lost his daughter for the third and final time. Tears will not suffice here.
And he has to be strong for his son.
He kneels and pulls Kit to him, hugging him close. “Your sister is dead,” he says, closing his eyes. There will be no softening this blow. “Her name was Selene. She was in the Peacekeeper Corps, and she - died a hero.”
After that, he takes Kit to the Wall. District Two has erected a monument in memory of the fallen: a granite wall, taller than Paul, etched with the names and numbers of every Peacekeeper who fell in the war regardless of who they fought for. The other districts mutter about honouring traitors, but every single one of them was a child of District Two, and it’s only fitting.
(The Victors are at the top, an unbroken line of names that begins with RONAN and ends with PETRA. Those are the only ones not laser-etched into the granite; Enobaria chiselled them in herself.)
He tells Kit about Selene as a child; he tells him about the Centre and the Hunger Games and Volunteering; he tells him about how she visited once before going on to join the Corps. He tells him about how she gave her life to defend her country, and how that makes her a hero regardless of who won. And Kit listens, and he holds his father’s hand, and he traces the letters marking the name of the sister he’ll never know.
Epilogue
Thirteen Years Later
“Happy birthday,” Kit tells Selene, touching the Wall. “I brought you flowers.”
It’s become a tradition of sorts, over the last few years, for him to come here on her birthday. The first time he did it, he hadn’t told Dad until after, worried about what the old man might think, but he had only blinked and said, “I think she would like that.”
So now he comes every year, bringing a handful of blue forget-me-nots.
“I’m going to Three in a few weeks,” Kit says, sinking down on a low bench. He has the place to himself, which is nice; not many people bother to pay their respects this early on a crisp December morning. “Just got the news at graduation. I’m to have a two-year stint there with a company that designs skyscrapers. Skyscrapers!” Kit laughs, softly. “Imagine me, a boy from Two, designing buildings that tall. My going-away party was last week. Just a small group, Mom and Dad and Uncle Ramon’s family. Some friends. Mom made a cake, and they made me make a speech, and I think Dad almost cried.”
It won’t be easy on the old man, letting his second child go, even knowing he’ll come back. But Paul Valent has always maintained that Kit is his own man, and that he should follow his heart; he was the one to encourage Kit’s interest in architecture, to buy him clay and sketching paper and stay up late at night helping him put models together. Kit has always been closer to his mother, but it’s because their temperaments are closer, not due to any lack of attention on his father’s part.
He thinks of the first time he came here, the day Dad came home and told him his sister was dead. He had been eight at the time. He’s twenty-one now, which makes him a year younger than his sister was when she died; soon he will be older than she ever was. Isn’t that an odd thought.
Kit kicks at the snow and talks, softly, his voice echoing off the granite wall. He tells Selene about school, about staying up all night putting the finishing touches on his model before graduation. He tells her about the sculpture he made for Mom for her birthday, a delicate twist of spun glass and obsidian. He tells her about how Dad took him aside, after the party, to give him one final gift: his old service pistol, the gun he’d learnt to fire when he was twelve, out on the trails up behind the house. “Just in case,” the old man had said, winking. “I know you kids have those fancy tasers in Three.” Kit had laughed and hugged him.
He doesn’t say, but he thinks about, his favourite memento of his sister: a beaded leather bracelet, threaded through with copper. She already knows about that. He hopes she would be happy he has it.
The sun’s risen fully now, and people have started drifting in in ones and twos. “Okay,” Kit says, standing up and brushing snow off his coat. “I guess it’s time to go. But I’ll be back next year, I promise.”
An old woman is close enough to overhear, and she glances at him. Kit inclines his head politely. “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Good morning.” She smiles at him, faint but genuine. “It’s nice to see you young people paying your respects. If you don’t mind me asking …”
Kit is used to the question. It’s usually phrased less gently; they usually assume, given his age, that he’s lost a parent or grandparent. “My sister,” he says, and is unsurprised to see her startled look. “She fell in the siege of the Capitol.”
“I’m sorry.” Genuine regret colours her voice. “Were you close?”
“No,” Kit says, honestly. He’s read his sister’s service record, has heard their parents’ stories of her childhood - but he’s only ever met her once, when he was too young to remember, and his mother still gets a haunted look on her face when she talks about that day. He won’t claim to have been close to her, or even known her. “But I would have liked the chance to be.”
The old woman only nods.
Kit touches his fist to his chest. “Mountains and earth.”
“Mountains and earth.”