No. 8: “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier.”
Overcrowded ER | Outnumbered | “It’s all for nothing.”
Hunger Games, my OCs District Ten’s Victors.
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It had started in innocence, Angus and his dad used to joke they were outnumbered by the girls in his family, his mom, sisters, aunts and cousins, then the war happened and Angus tried to keep the joke up when it was just him, his littlest sister and closest cousin. A family of twenty down to three.
Whatever innocence left, died quickly when the reapings started and the games kept repeating.
District 10 is the livestock district. It isn't that hard to accept that two of their children every year are just as much livestock as the animals they sent, or the meat, a fair trade to keep those behind alive.
He was outnumbered by the peacekeepers on the 9th reaping when it was his own name, even if he wasn’t he couldn’t fight when it would bring them down on his girls. Then in the games he was outnumbered one against twenty two.
Twenty two because nothing would make him raise a hand against the little girl that had spent the train ride sobbing into his shirt the same way his sister did after a nightmare. He didn’t need to worry about that though as his last clear memory from his games was his thin neck snapping at the hands of a much bigger kid.
He’s fifteen and about to die.
His next clear memory was a hammer in his hands and realising the wet stickiness covering him was blood and other stuff.
He’s outnumbered in the district, the only one to return and every pair of eyes he can feel on screams they would have wanted someone else back.
He’s outnumbered when Peacekeepers arrive for him with a stylist a few years later when they decide the Victors have the honour to mentor the new tribute. He’s outnumbered in the Capitol, one of the few real people in a sea of mockeries, how can people laugh and cheer as children die?
After a few more years he’s outnumbered as the sole Victor from the outer districts. He’s outnumbered by the number of dead children piling up next to his name as every year he returns to Ten sitting between another pair of wooden boxes.
His close calls, the children he can almost see coming home with him, are outnumbered by the children dead in the first few days.
Even his miracles are outnumbered, not by the many children he failed to save but by the many ways he failed them.
Lambert Edwin, his first success after years of waiting, already full of anger before his name was called. Who had only smiled when Edwin told him “No rules, don’t hold back.” had gone into the games and reflected the Capitol’s true bloodlust back at them with his hooks and habit of leaving the tribute hung up to bleed, a true son of the slaughterhouses.
And when he came out Angus covered him in rules but failed him, because for all he had watched and learnt he couldn’t stop it all repeating on his victor. Couldn’t stop the games following him and taking his mother, couldn’t warn his charge not to let those in the Capitol near because they wouldn’t accept the word No once they had a taste.
In the end his angry boy Lambert was remade by into Capitol’s Edwin, a charming stallion.
Ten’s the livestock district, Angus should have known better, deadstock or breeding stock, those reaped belong to the Capitol.
Cuckoo who went into the games with a mask of a sadist to cover a romantic at heart, who had already killed the girl she was, when she introduced herself as Culla in the interviews and had her face all over the Capitol the night she killed half the Careers when she lured the Games mutts to where they slept.
Highest kill count for a non-career but the Capitol only cared for the pretty girl biting an apple as red as her lips. She went to the parties without being reminded of the cost, if she didn’t, she shrugged off the marks left behind because she believed they couldn’t truly touch her and Angus hadn’t warned her.
So when Charley was reaped she broke, the younger brother to her once fiance, the only one from home who had never flinched when she came back. Charley went into the games, as Talon, he was strong, handsome, charming and everything you could need in a victor.
But Angus has learnt that means little and his reaping wasn’t by chance, so while Angus and Edwin worked to keep him alive he hadn’t been able to stop Cuckoo, his hidden romantic from making a deal with the devil.
And in the aftermath of the games Culla and Talon were wed in the Capitol and in the years that follow their ‘happy ending’ Angus watches as his future failures are born, children the Capitol greet with cheers and one day will cry over as they are reaped and die in the games.
Children bred to die, because Ten is the livestock district they know how this goes.
His latest Hereford, who barely counts as a success as he fails her from the beginning, the girl who volunteered to save a friend and had no plans to win at all, only agreeing to live long enough to kill her 12 year old partner.
They dress them as a pair of little lambs, ‘lambs to the slaughter’. She's fifteen and ready for her death and laughs at the joke, bright and free. He was fifteen once, when he picked up a hammer and started outnumbering himself with dead children.
Snow tells him to ensure she wins, so he can remind the current Career districts that they can be replaced, Angus doesn’t know why but he has learnt not to question. So he breaks his one promise, that every one of his tributes can choose to die, and sends her a message, she’s a smart girl she understands it She dies, her family follows.
For years the shows replay the moment she stares at the camera as the moment she decided she ‘would not fall’, Angus knows it as betrayal, it’s the last moment she lets herself show anger.
The friend she volunteered for dies with her family at the same moment Hereford wins, ‘gas leak what a shame’, Snow smiles when he tells Angus, Hereford’s family is left alone.
When she comes out, the interview gives her a new name, Fera for the way she fought desperately to win and because the Capitol already has a Hera from Two. Fera smiles and laughs and it’s empty and fake.
He lives in a village, where the empty houses outnumber the full ones and now he wants it to stay that way until something changes because for every filled house there are twenty three dead children and a broken survivor that he keeps failing.
But it won’t until all the districts learn to ignore the blood of each other's children and turn together against the Capitol, until then they outnumber themselves.
It’s the same within the games, two children against twenty two others.
For the victors where they are dragged out of the games as nothing more than bloody children and dressed up to be torn apart by either the grasping hands of the Capitol or their own nightmares that haunt them.
Ten maybe be the livestock district but to the Capitol they’re the all livestock, but every stockman knows to remain wary around your stock and them, in their painted wigs have forgotten that if they ever knew it.
Angus is old and there's no innocence left, but he’s learned patience and now he’s just waiting for a spark of a fire to start a stampede, that will crush the unaware in the centre.
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