#he and all the other mentors were just as expendable as the district children

[mollywog]

“Thank you. I’ll do the same. I didn’t mean to snap like that. It’s not your fault. I should’ve brought it up before.” Her voice dropped to a hush. “It’s just . . . I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about sitting through this. I know it’s to punish the districts, but haven’t we punished them enough? How long do we have to keep dragging the war out?”

“I think Dr. Gaul believes forever,” he said. “Like she told us in class.”

“It’s not just her. Look at everybody.” She indicated the party-like atmosphere of the room. “It’s revolting.”

Coriolanus tried to calm her. “My cousin said to remember this isn’t of our making. That we’re still children, too.”

“That doesn’t help, somehow. Being used like this,” said Lysistrata sadly. “Especially when three of us are dead.”

Used? Coriolanus had not thought of being a mentor as anything but an honor. A way to serve the Capitol and perhaps gain a little glory. But she had a point. If the cause wasn’t honorable, how could it be an honor to participate in it? He felt confused, then manipulated, then undefended. As if he were more a tribute than a mentor.

Ahhh, he’s so close.

[mintresa]

*reemerges from the deep dark void to tell you all about my shiny new minresa hunger games au are you ready here we go*

This is a fusion. Katniss and Peeta win the 73rd Games instead of the 74th. There have been uprisings in the districts. Although they have been put down, the message has been sent. The districts are no longer willing to roll over and beg.

As usual, the reaping begins at Twelve first. Panem watches as Prim is reaped again. There’s no one to save her this time. (The first time, she was not the main target.)

There are no volunteers this year, not for any district either. There is no illusion of choice, or of hope. The reply of the President is loud and clear: districts must submit to the Capitol.

That said, the show must go on. If the Career districts still manage to end up with trained boys and girls, second and third choices mind, the humiliation is theirs but they can be counted on to deliver. The same can be said for the rebelling districts, where if it happens the children of the dissidents are chosen, it is all just the matter of the reaping bowl.

The 73rd was the year of the star-crossed lovers who cheated destiny. The 74th will be the narrative of fate striking back. This is the year of the slaughterhouse.

As the centre of this maelstrom was the Girl On Fire herself, Prim cannot be allowed to survive. The only matter of it is who will be the executioner. The arena will do its work, but the Capitol is still out for blood. Upon whom will it fall?

Among the Career districts, the district that had come closest to winning the previous year had been the Twos. (Had things gone sideways, they could easily have been spun as the other set of star-crossed lovers, although lovers they were not, nor star-crossed. They were Twos. They knew their duty. It would have destroyed them, but they would have known their duty.) Mountains and earth, and Two stands. One is weary, and Four wearier. Two will probably be the one. Their tributes this year: Rachel, and Minho.

Even in the Capitol, people have paid - Seneca Crane and his retinue retired and replaced. The new Gamemakers this year, Plutarch Heavensbee and Ava Paige, and their apprentice Gamemakers, including Teresa and Thomas, are expected to make a Games more spectacular than ever, while washing away the taste of rebellion in the mouths of the people.

Thomas cannot keep watching them die. Neither can Teresa, but thankfully she helps him keep his dumb mouth shut before he blabs and gets them both in trouble.

Teresa has been in on the rebellion longer than Thomas. Her mother wasn’t a dissident per se, but she did have firm opinions and stuck by them, enough that she was taken away, but not before she was forced to look at her beloved daughter being sent to one of the Capitol’s prestigious academies, to be later trained among the top echelons of the Capitol, where she would almost certainly forget her mother’s unfortunate ways of thinking, and indeed her mother herself.

Teresa... did struggle. Being in the academy had meant hours of endless excitement, whirled away to one party and the next, all of it a haze and she’s sure they did something to her there. She has trouble remembering some things, and sometimes her thoughts run away from her. But she is certain of this. Panem cannot be made to stay on this way. There must be change.

This is how the tributes of the districts shake out: from District One, two beautiful 17 years olds in Sonya and Ben, District Three has Aris, District Four has a beautiful boy reminiscent of Finnick Odair in Newt, his district partner Harriet, Chuck from Five, Gally and Beth from Six, Brenda from Seven, Frypan from Nine, Winston from Ten, Alby from Eleven, and Jeff from Twelve reaped with Prim.

This is what Teresa thinks about the tributes; Prim is one of the youngest, and the odds are certainly not in her favour with more than half the tributes actually looking like they may have a chance. She hopes Prim can run. She will not even have the mercy of being killed in the bloodbath, Teresa suspects. That would be too tame for a crowd that would be bloodthirstier than usual.

Minho and Rachel are more stoic than the usual Twos bunch. Well, Minho is, Rachel is quite a bit flashy, in the earnest sense that means she believes in her rhetoric. Loyalty to the Capitol, and all that. Expected, in a year that the Capitol is demanding districts show their obeisance. Minho, though, is different. She can’t quite put her finger on how, but she already knows he’s the one she’ll be watching most for the Games. She thinks he could be the one.

There are a lot of strong personalities in this year. Alby, Gally, Brenda from the outliers. She doesn’t know what the Capitol is planning for Four’s boy when he wins, but for now, he’s proven he’s no lightweight either. Quite like Minho, in fact. You look, and there’s something about them that you can’t look away as easy.

The thing with being an apprentice Gamemaker is that you get to interact with a few mentors. Not all, but many of them, and it’s like playing a chess game sometimes because these are people who’ve seen how the game is played. They can’t be underestimated - see how brilliantly Haymitch took charge of the narrative last year and brought in a win worthy only of his own the previous Quell. The way he saw the game, which even the Twos couldn’t stop, for all that they were trained to look for it, or the Fours, who struggled without Mags. Being an apprentice Gamemaker means Thomas and Teresa can finally meet them (meet potential allies.) It’s... definitely an experience.

Thomas likes the Fours the best. He likes how they’re the anomaly, Careers who get along swimmingly with the non-Careers, who’ve somehow overcome the prejudice outlier mentors have. He likes their versatility.

Teresa... doesn’t like the Twos exactly, no more than she likes the Capitol’s district system to begin with, but she’s drawn to them. That kind of fanatical devotion and set way of looking at the world that she had fought so hard to get out of, the disgust and sick fascination it arouses from her, and the evolution of it in Two’s mentors, who are about as level-headed as mentors can be in a situation where they’ll have to prepare children for a situation wherein they’ll most likely die. Lyme probably won’t come to Capitol this year after Cato, but Teresa would’ve liked to meet her. In terms of individuals that she has met, she likes Haymitch best.

This is the best time for a revolution. Snow will do his best to step in, but the revolution will happen. All that’s left is the fuse.

Plutarch Heavensbee has a flair for style. The arena of the 74th is meant to embody the concept of a mouse in a trap, helpless to the whim of its trappers in the most literal sense. The 74th arena is a maze.

The cornucopia and podiums will be set in the middle of the maze, ironically perhaps the only safe place in the arena. A small glade, and four doors that lead out into the maze. The further out, the more pitfalls or mutts. There’s a lift in the middle of the glade that leads underground, where await more traps. If a tribute makes it out of the maze (unlikely), they find themselves in a completely different environment with scorching sands and whipped winds. The sun will kill them like anything else will.

The children of the dissidents may be killed in the bloodbath, but not Prim. Maybe it is a small illusion of grace that the tribute reaped with her, Jeff, seems to have some medicinal skills. However, he is small and fairly skinny, as most Twelves are. There will not be much hope for him, especially because Katniss, who will be coming back to mentor this year, will expend all her efforts to bring Prim home. Teresa can’t imagine Haymitch and Peeta trying to stop her too much.

(Katniss and Peeta are her and Thomas’ age. It disturbs her more than she will admit what might be happening if she and Thomas were the Twelve mentors right now, and it was her sister she was sending to her death.)

Apprentice Gamemakers may meet with the mentors, but with the tributes themselves the chances are slim. There is simply no reason for them to meet. Yet this is the situation Teresa finds herself in when she’s heading to the roof in the training centre for some time to clear her head after another meeting with Heavensbee and finds District Two Male already there, his mentor nowhere in sight, just standing and staring into the distance. He turns at the sight of her footsteps though, and his face registers some surprise. Probably because he doesn’t know anyone his age that is not a tribute or an Avox is in the building.

They both make to leave at the same time. Both stop. Teresa introduces herself by name, but does not offer her job. He offers his name too, but she already knows it of course. She would still leave, but she’s already here, and he doesn’t seem like he wants to talk much either, so she just stands by him, and thinks in silence. She files away the fact that he’d rather be up here than with his mentor. After a while, she sits, and pats the ground beside her. His eyebrow quirked, he sits too.

It’s weird. If it had been Cato last year, she doubts he would’ve kept his silence so well, or stayed. There’s a sort of restrained energy to Minho, as if he’s trying to hold something back. Teresa lets her own thoughts quiet, and she waits. True enough, he speaks. I knew Clove, he says. She was in my year at the Centre.

He looks like he’s struggling with something, and when he lets it out it’s a relief. She was supposed to be the tribute this year. It takes Teresa a few moments, but then she gets it. He can’t say anymore, in case the roof is bugged probably (it isn’t, not this close to the edge and the hum of the forcefield) but she gets it. It wasn’t supposed to be Cato and Clove last year. It had been the Capitol’s plan. They’d been angling for drama all along, she knew, it was exactly something Crane would’ve done, but knowing how far he’d gone makes her feel sick. And to think, he must’ve been planning for Katniss and Peeta too, except it had backfired on him, and now, well.

You’re one of them, aren’t you? She stiffens, but there’s no judgment in his gaze. He’s still trained after all. Image training, camera training. But he did give her some honesty, so she nods. An apprentice, she gives him. It’s my first year too. First year in this part of the Capitol, in the Games. She’s how old Clove was when she died. She’s spending time with someone she’ll have to kill in a few days, or weeks. Indirectly, but still. What a f—-ked up world, she can’t say, but he snorts in response anyway.

How Teresa wishes she can save him, save them all, little Chuck who looks barely twelve, Prim, the others. But it’s not her job. They don’t say anything else the rest of the time, and soon Thomas comes to find her. She doesn’t see him again, not where she can acknowledge him.

She does meet Primrose, another time she goes to the rooftop. Katniss Everdeen is with her, and she’s pretty hostile, but Primrose is friendly, and somehow they manage to make small, civil conversation before the sisters leave her alone.

The days are filled with doing one thing after the next, though, so she does not go to the rooftop again, and it is only later that she realises that what Minho was telling her should’ve stricken her as odd. Because Two is the most loyal district there is, and if this is what their tribute is thinking, then who knows? Maybe this is the just the spark they need.