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Chapter Text

The sound of breaking glass coming from the kitchen jolted Daryl awake, and his hand instinctively curled around the worn handle of the knife he kept under his ragged pillow.

“Boy!” Daryl closed his eyes and gritted his teeth at the drunken yell that seemed to echo around the small room. “Git yer worthless ass out here!”

Wishing his father would just go and drown himself in the fucking bathtub, Daryl pushed himself up into a sitting position and glared angrily at the rest of the room. Weak sunshine was streaming through the only window, illuminating the four other pieces of furniture, a haphazard dresser, two tiny nightstands with a candle stub on each of them, and the bed pushed against the opposite wall where Merle was snoring away. He was clad only in boxers and lay face-down and spread-eagled, obviously without a care in the world.

Daryl stood up, wincing when his ancient mattress squeaked in protest, and padded over to the dresser, his bare feet moving soundlessly on the cold dirt floor. Merle showed no sign of waking up, even when their father started shouting incoherently and something crashed loudly to the floor outside of the bedroom. He yanked open the top drawer and pulled on an old pair of black pants before shoving his feet into his boots and lacing them up. He grabbed the first long-sleeved shirt his eyes fell on that didn’t look too dirty and pulled it over his head. Taking a deep breath to steady himself for the storm on the other side, Daryl opened his door.

“What?” He snapped at the older Dixon, who was currently drunk out of his skull and rummaging through the cupboards in the kitchen, grumbling to himself. His beer belly pressed against the counter, the graying hair on his chest poking above the filthy wifebeater he wore. Threadbare boxers barely left him decent, and mismatched socks protected his feet from the shards of brown glass that littered the floor, evidence of a broken beer bottle or two. A large soup pot lay dented on the ground, no doubt the source of the crashing noise earlier. His father turned toward him and got right in his face, sneering madly.

“Ain’t no food. How many times do I hafta fuckin’ tell ya? Keep the damn cupboards full, ya lazy-ass piece of shit!” Will Dixon was a force to be reckoned with when hungry and drunk. Daryl turned his head away from the smell emanating from him, a delightful combination of liquor, morning breath, cigarette smoke, and sweat. Ugh.

Turning his head earned him a smack across his temple that left his ears ringing. His old man was yelling again, and he shuffled toward the door, trying to clear his head.

“I’m going, I’m going,” he muttered, grabbing his black leather vest and his forage bag and slamming the front door in the older Dixon’s face. Muffled yells could still be heard on the other side of the door, but Daryl was already heading away from the godforsaken house with a scowl on his face.

It was a chilly morning, and the sun was just beginning to peek over the tops of the other houses in the Seam, dissolving the silvery mist that hung low to the ground. The streets lacked the usual coal miners straggling toward the mine to be transported down by the elevator. Everyone was sleeping in, or at least trying to, on the single day they got off for the year. Daryl didn’t know if his old man even realized that it was the day of the reaping, as drunk as he was. He was perfectly willing to go hunting this morning, it got him out of the house and away from his family and he would be able to focus on something other than the upcoming reaping.

Daryl paused at the fence that surrounded the entirety of District 12, a menacing thing with coils of barbed wire at the top, and listened. The fence was supposed to be electrified 24/7, supposedly to keep out predators in the woods, but he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had electricity for more than three hours in a day. He didn’t hear the low hum that indicated the fence was alive, so he glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wouldn’t be seen. Even though nobody was awake yet, and practically everyone knew that he hunted illegally, he never liked the idea of a Peacekeeper watching as he left the boundaries of District 12. It didn’t matter if most of them were some of his best customers, they still had the power to put a bullet in his head.

Daryl dropped to his stomach and slid underneath the gap that was hidden by a patch of weeds. He crossed the field everyone called the Meadow quickly and entered the trees, breathing a sigh of relief as the fresh, earthy smell of the woods enveloped him, a stark contrast from the stink of coal and smoke. The forest was the only place he’d ever really felt comfortable. There, he only had to watch his back for normal predators like wild dogs and coyotes, not strange ones like hidden cameras and Peacekeepers the way he had to while in the limits of District 12.

His crossbow, wrapped in protective layers, was stashed in an old log alongside the bolts that went with it. Merle had presented it to him proudly on his eleventh birthday.

“Time you learned how to hunt, little brother!” Merle had smirked at him as he held it, marveling at it in awe. It was a finely made, high-tech weapon, not something usually found out of the hands of Peacekeepers in the poorer districts.

“Where’d you get this?” He’d asked tentatively. If Merle had stolen it…

“Been in the family for years, dumbass. Did ya think all them critters just fell over and died on their own so I could take ‘em home and stick ‘em in a stew for your puny ass?”

Daryl still believed that Merle had lied to him about stealing it, since he was absolute crap with the crossbow and brilliant with snares. But he figured he might as well use the damn thing. Everyone thought he used a regular wooden bow that either he or Merle had made. Starving was the only other option, which happened too often in District 12, and he didn’t much care for that idea.

He loaded a bolt and shook errant thoughts from his mind, focusing entirely on tracking down possible game. He could check the snares Merle had set up earlier in the week and collect berries on his way back.

A couple of rabbits, a few squirrels, and a couple containers of blackberries and strawberries later, the sun was rising high in the sky and Daryl was resetting the last snare just a ways from the edge of the woods. He usually stayed longer and caught more, but he didn’t want to risk being late for the reaping. He crossed the Meadow again, slid back underneath the fence, and reluctant to go home, headed toward the Hob, the black market where he did most of his trading.

The old warehouse wasn’t quite as busy as usual, but enough that he would be able to easily trade part of his haul for what he needed. As he quietly moved through the market, he felt eyes burning into him from all sides. He didn’t hesitate to shoot a death glare at anyone besides the people he usually traded with who stared too long, taking in his hostile appearance and dirty clothes, and silently making judgments. People disliked his family, his father was an arrogant, useless drunk and Merle was often obnoxious and flouted the law more than just occasionally, but they dealt with him when he made an effort to be civil. He saved the strawberries to sell to the mayor, who had a fondness for them, and kept one of the rabbits, two of the squirrels and half the blackberries for home. He picked up a bottle of white liquor to pacify his father for a few days. He also traded for a couple of small loaves of good bread, and a tiny white bar of soap.

Daryl stashed the soap in his pocket, trying not to think about why he’d needed to buy it. They rarely bothered with the stuff, it was an unnecessary luxury and plain water usually worked just fine. He left the Hob and made his way to the mayor’s house, keeping to one side of the street and knocking on the back door when he finally got there.

Madge, the mayor’s daughter, opened the door, and her face broke into a shy smile. She was in the same grade as Daryl, and since both of them tended to keep to themselves and didn’t really have a group of friends, they sometimes ended up doing things together at school. Eating lunch, partnering for sports activities, but there was rarely any form of conversation, which was fine with Daryl. He suspected that Madge might want a little more than friendship from him, but she was too shy to say anything and he’d never really had an interest in girls. Or anyone, for that matter. Sometimes it bothered him, wondering why nobody ever quite managed to really catch his eye, but usually he was too concerned about feeding himself and his family to worry much about it.

Daryl handed the container of strawberries to her, and she took them carefully, not wanting to get any of the red juice on what looked like a new, expensive white dress. Reaping clothes. His eyes flashed to the real gold pin she had near her collarbone, and to the pink ribbon in her hair.

“Ribbon wasn’t enough?” He said curtly, eyeing the gold pin again. They’d never talked about their personal lives and he would ordinarily keep himself from pulling a Merle and commenting on something so stupid, but the expensive clothes and accessories his friend wore reminded him too much of his own status. Poor as fucking dirt.

Madge frowned at him, then fiddled with the hem of her dress and said, “Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don’t I?”

Daryl snorted. “Please. You ain’t going to the fuckin’ Capitol. You can’t tell me you got more than five entries. Count yourself lucky. Most of us ain’t so fortunate as to have a daddy like yours.”

He ground his teeth in frustration when Madge pressed her lips tightly together to stop them from trembling. He hadn’t meant to upset her. She handed him the money for the strawberries and said “Well, good luck, Daryl” in a quiet voice before shutting the door and leaving him outside by himself.

He trudged home, unhappy with himself. He hadn’t meant to be an asshole, but it was hard to keep your temper in check when faced with someone who didn’t need to worry about the unfairness of the reaping system. The poor got the worst of it. Every single citizen in all twelve districts of Panem became eligible for the Hunger Games on their twelfth birthday. That year, their name gets entered once, and at thirteen, twice. And so on until they turned eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when their name goes in seven times.

But if those eligible for the reaping are poor and can’t afford to feed themselves, they can opt to add their name extra times into the pool in exchange for tesserae, one extra name for one tessera. Each tessera is worth one year’s supply of grain and oil for one person, and they can do this for each of their family members as well. So when Merle turned twelve, he had entered his name four times into the pool, once because he had to, and three more for the tesserae for himself, Daryl, and their father. Since the entries were cumulative, when he was thirteen, his name was entered eight times. At eighteen, his name was in the pool twenty-eight times.

When Daryl opened the front door, Will Dixon was passed out at the miniscule dining room table, and Merle was dumping the shards of brown glass into the trash bin. Daryl wordlessly set the food down on the table and looked at his father with disgust.

“I ain’t waking him up,” he said.

Merle smirked at him. “What’s the matter, Darylina, scared of your own daddy? What’s he gonna do, puke on ya?”

“I went hunting while your lazy ass slept in. You can take care of him for the reaping.” Daryl glowered at Merle before stomping off toward the washroom. He filled the small tub with water, sighing in relief when he realized it was lukewarm instead of the usual icy temperature. He undressed and got in, forcing himself to try and enjoy the warm water as he rubbed the soap over his skin to clean off the dirt and grime from the woods.

Back in his room, he dug out the only nice clothes he owned, black trousers and a white button up shirt with long sleeves and a collar. He pulled his dusty black shoes from under the dresser and drew out the worn, faded photograph he kept inside the right shoe.

Daryl didn’t really believe in Heaven. Or Hell. But every year on Reaping Day, he pulled out the only picture he had of his mother and re-memorized the way her face looked, framed by curly black hair and just a hint of a smile touching her lips. He had been just four years old when she died in a fire, and his father had resorted to alcohol to try and drown the pain of losing her. But when the pain refused to die, he started taking his anger out first on Merle, and then on Daryl.

He gently placed the photograph in the drawer of his nightstand before dusting off the shoes and pulling them on. They had been Merle’s before he’d grown out of them, so they were a little too big and always gave Daryl blisters. He left his room and sat down at the dining table, which was now empty except for the food he’d brought home that morning. The bottle of white liquor was missing. Merle must have managed to get their father in and out of the washroom while he’d been getting dressed.

He picked at one of the loaves of bread while he waited for the other two to finish getting ready for the reaping. He’d been trying to avoid this all morning, sitting still so he couldn’t be distracted from the roiling pit of fear in his stomach that stemmed from what was coming up.

At seventeen years of age, he had twenty-four entries going into the boys’ reaping ball. Merle had turned nineteen the year he was twelve, so he had had to enter his name four times in order to keep his family supplied with the precious tesserae that kept them alive.

Twenty-four entries. And this year was different than usual, in the worst kind of way. The 50th Hunger Games marked the second Quarter Quell, a glorified version of the Games that was held every 25 years and had a sadistic twist. For the first, each district was forced to hold and election and vote on which tributes would be made to participate. Daryl’s blood ran cold at the memory of the televised President Snow reading the card that dictated what would be special about the second Quarter Quell.

“On the fiftieth anniversary, as a reminder that two rebels died for each Capitol citizen, each district will be required to send twice as many tributes as usual.”

Forty-eight tributes. The amount of bloodshed from a regular Games was already sickening, Daryl couldn’t imagine how anyone would be able to get through even watching this year’s Games, much less actually being forced into the arena with a field twice as big as usual. Worse odds, less hope, and more corpses at the end.

At that moment, Merle stepped out of the washroom, buck naked and lacking the usual dirt and coal dust that covered his skin. He passed Daryl wordlessly on his way to their bedroom but threw him an exaggerated wink and sashayed his hips as he went by. Daryl let out a snort. He never understood how Merle always managed to keep up his I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude on days like today.

His older brother wasted no time getting dressed, coming out in clothes identical to Daryl’s except for his shirt, which was dark gray instead of white. He pounded on the door of their father’s bedroom, yelling, “Ain’t you ready yet? We don’t got all damn day!”

There was no answer. Merle lifted his leg and literally kicked open the door, letting it slam against the wall inside the bedroom. He stood in the doorway looking into the room for a moment, and then cracked up laughing. He turned back toward Daryl. “Fucker took that booze ya got this morning and knocked himself out again. He can get himself thrown behind bars for all I care.”

Daryl nodded solemnly, his nerves running high. Unless you were fatally ill, missing the reaping was cause for being imprisoned. Will Dixon had been locked in the District 12 jail more times than he could remember, one more wouldn’t make much of a difference. Except that he and Merle would have to face him afterward, he’d be pissed off for being put there simply because they didn’t bother to wake him up. They’d both end up with a few marks, but they were used to that by now. If they went hunting the day he got out, he would probably take out most of his frustration on the empty house first. A few broken things wasn’t a big deal.

Merle kept up a stream of jabber all the way to the square, but Daryl was barely listening. Merle was safe, but he wasn’t. He had twenty-four slips in the boys’ reaping ball, and two boys were going this year. They reached the square, and Merle leered at the pretty woman who signed him in while Daryl numbly stared straight ahead at the stage set up in front of the Justice Building. Three chairs, a podium, and two huge glass balls filled with hundreds of paper slips had been set up on the stage. The glass ball holding the boy’s names seemed to stare back at him.

Daryl watched as Merle was directed toward the perimeter of the square, while he was herded into a roped off section filled with seventeen year olds. He glanced around, looking for someone he might be able to stand next to and find strength from. Ahead of him, in a clump of eighteen year olds, he locked eyes with someone he’d barely given a second thought to. Rick Grimes, the son of a wealthy merchant family, was staring at him, but he looked away as soon as Daryl curled his lip in a sneer. Rick probably only had seven entries, the smallest number an eighteen year old could have. His family was rich enough that he didn’t need to take out any tesserae. Lucky bastard.

Daryl managed to catch Madge’s eye on the other side of the square, and for a moment they just looked at each other. Daryl tried to look abashed and mouthed “Sorry” to her, hoping she would forgive him for being a dickhead earlier. She gave him another shy smile and nodded at him, and Daryl turned to watch the three people on stage, the mayor, Effie Trinket, and Hershel Greene. They whispered among themselves and stared out into the growing crowd that was District 12.

The town clock struck two, its low chimes echoing through the square, which had rapidly fallen silent. The mayor stood up heavily from his chair, and began to read the history of Panem. Daryl tuned him out, focusing on breathing evenly and trying not to panic. He hated crowds, he didn’t like people in general, and now he was in the middle of the entire population of District 12, waiting for four names, kids he might know, to be called and sentenced to die.

Daryl only began to listen again when the name “Hershel Greene” echoed from the mayor’s microphone. Hershel was a past victor from District 12, and the only one. He had won the fourth Hunger Games at eighteen years old, and had mentored all of the District 12 tributes since. Every single one of them had died in their respective Games. Sorrow seemed etched into the lines of his face as he gazed at the groups of children whose names were in the reaping balls.

Effie Trinket, the manaically peppy escort for District 12, was introduced, and she hopped up to the podium, her pink dress and matching shoes, styled curls, and excessive makeup looking scarily out of place in the drab, colorless square. “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!” Daryl gritted his teeth as she went on and on in her silly Capitol accent about being just so excited for the Quarter Quell and what an honor it was to be the escort for such brave tributes. As if they had a choice. Just draw the fucking names already!

“Ladies first!” She grinned widely and crosses the stage, her ridiculous pink high heels clicking with each step, and reached into the ball, skimming the slips on top before digging her arm deeper into the reaping ball and pulling out a name.

She clicked back to the podium, and held the slip of paper in the air in front of her face importantly. “Sophia Peletier!”

Daryl closed his eyes. Sophia was a tiny twelve year old that no one could help but love. Her father had been an abusive drunk, just like his own, before he died in a mine explosion. She was a source of happiness in the Seam, always willing to help someone in need and making friends everywhere she went. Daryl had even given her a small container of strawberries once, just because he couldn’t resist her sweet smile when he’d bumped into her on his way to the market.

The crowd shifted unhappily as Sophia made her way to the stage, white-faced and sniffling but bravely holding back tears. A woman wailed somewhere near the perimeter of the square, her mother no doubt, sending chills down Daryl’s spine.

“Let’s give a big round of applause for our first tribute!” Effie smiled down at Sophia, who stared at her shoes. A reluctant smattering of applause briefly flared up, and then Effie clicked back to the girl’s reaping ball for the second name. Daryl was too focused on the little girl up on stage, dressed in a sky blue blouse and a khaki skirt, to hear the second name. But he saw a girl just a grade below him in school, leaving her circle of weeping friends and taking her place beside Sophia, and he recalled her name. Karen something. Girl from the Seam with dark hair and big, kind brown eyes, which were now filled with fear. There was a hesitant applause for her too.

Sweat dripped down his back and he felt like throwing up as Effie tantalizingly played with the slips in the boy’s reaping ball before snagging one between her painted pink nails. Don’t let it be me, don’t let it be me, don’t let it be me…

“Carl Grimes!”

The name felt like a kick to the chest, knocking the breath out of him. Good fucking Lord, another twelve year old? Daryl turned and watched as the young dark-haired boy stiffened and a look of pure horror came over his face. Just as he started to leave the spot he was standing in, another voice rang out.

“Carl!” The voice did not sound human, it was a deep, agonized cry that expressed all the pain and rage someone felt when they were about to lose something dearly precious to them. It was even more chilling than the cries from Sophia’s mother. Daryl turned back toward the stage to see Rick’s tortured expression as he fought his way out of the crowd of eighteen-year olds, shouting his younger brother’s name desperately. He ducked under the rope that marked his age and gender’s section and threw a savage punch at a Peacekeeper that tried to hold him back.

“I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!”

Daryl stared wide-eyed at Rick, who was pushing the screaming Carl back toward the twelve-year old section. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to volunteer. District 12 tributes were never, ever counted on to win, they were usually marked as easy targets early on and hunted down by the other tributes. But the merchant’s son had volunteered for the sake of his younger brother.

Effie was saying something into the microphone, but Daryl didn’t register the magnified words. He could only watch as someone pulled Carl away from Rick, who was fighting to get his emotions under control. He stiffly walked up the stairs to the stage, his chin shaking and his lips trembling as he faced the crowd, but no tears fell.

“What’s your name, honey?” Effie wrapped her arm around Rick’s broad shoulders, which he didn’t respond to, except to stiffen even more.

“Rick Grimes.” His voice was thick with emotion, but steady.

“Don’t want Carl stealing all the glory, do we?” When Rick gave her a look so clearly filled with hatred, she let go of him and asked cheerfully for applause, giving a little ovation herself.

No one clapped. The entire population of District 12 stayed completely silent as they stared up at the tributes on stage. They did not agree with what was happening, and they refused to celebrate the awful sacrifice Rick was making. It was sick, it was twisted, it was wrong. Daryl wondered for a brief second if they would be forced into applauding before Effie, who looked extremely taken aback by the lack of approval from the crowd, scooted back to the boys’ reaping ball to get things going again.

Her hand, whitened with powder and tipped with those long pink claws, seemed to slow down to an excruciating pace as she reached daintily into the glass. The sun beat down on Daryl’s eyes blindingly as he watched those claws indecisively glide over the slips of paper. Each slip was a different fate. Each slip held a name that would change a boy’s life, either ending it too soon in a fit of violence or sentencing him to nightmares and unwanted fame for the rest of his life. Don’t let it be me…

She selected a folded slip, delicately holding it up with two fingers with her mouth in a slight “O” shape as if to tease the crowd. Click, click, click back across the stage. Smoothing it out, reading it as if she were peering at it over a pair of glasses. A slight smile before she announced the name.

“Daryl Dixon!”

Chapter Text

Daryl couldn’t breathe. That was his name. It was him. He’d been reaped. He was now a tribute in the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell, facing forty-seven other kids who would be trying to kill him. And they would probably succeed.

Adrenaline spiked through his veins and his heart started to race as he stared at Effie, who had a bland smile on her face as her eyes flickered across the crowd in search of him. Then he numbly turned his gaze to his left, toward Merle.

The expression on his older brother’s face hit him harder than any of their father’s belts had in the past. Merle was not upset and tearful, he was not smiling in that twisted, amused way he had, and he didn’t look shocked to the core the way Daryl felt. He was pissed.

To anyone else, Merle had carefully arranged his ugly features in a mask that betrayed nothing as to what he actually felt. To Daryl, the hard line of his mouth and the dull blue eyes stared daggers at him, screaming everything Merle was thinking at that moment. You gonna be a pussy about this? Fuck the Games, little brother.

Fuck the Games, indeed. The raging hatred in Merle’s eyes was almost tangible as it smacked some sense into Daryl, and he mashed down the fear and the panic as best he could and wrenched his gaze back up toward Effie with what he hoped was a fierce glare. His brother had taught him well. He was not a pathetic weakling from District 12 who would be easily picked off by the Career pack. He would do his brother proud, even if he didn’t make it home in the process.

Trying to keep his hands from shaking, Daryl moved from where he was standing and pushed through the clump of seventeen year olds, sinking into his tough-guy façade and making his way up to the stage, giving Effie a death stare when she smiled warmly at him. He took his place next to Rick, who seemed to be radiating tension, and avoided the other three tributes’ gazes and glared at the back of the square. He barely registered that the crowd had stayed silent when Effie asked for applause, just like they had with Rick. He figured it was just leftover resentment from Rick’s sacrifice, since there was no reason for the crowd to be overly upset about his fate. His muscles twitched and trembled as he stood there, glowering at the opposite end of the square, not listening to the mayor read the Treaty of Treason and bottling up every emotion that tried to bubble up to the surface.

Maybe it was just the survival instincts driven deep into him by his family and the harsh living conditions of District 12, but almost immediately, Daryl silently began sizing up the other three tributes. He felt sick when his mind automatically marked Sophia as an easy target, someone he didn’t need to worry about. Before he could tear himself out of his self-preservative way of thinking, he had already stored Karen away as someone to watch for a potential threat, and Rick as someone he should avoid at all costs. The other boy tribute was bigger than him and probably stronger, and he might have won over some of the sponsors in the Capitol with the way he’d sacrificed himself for Carl, but he didn’t have the mentality that Daryl did. Daryl had learned to never rely on anyone but himself, and that was an advantage he would have over Rick.

After what felt like hours, the mayor finally motioned for the four of them to shake hands. Rick reached for Karen’s hand, so Daryl turned toward Sophia. Looking at her sweet, innocent, fearful face, he felt a pang of sorrow and regret, stabbing deep into him and making his heart wrench. How was he going to let someone kill this little girl, who he’d once given strawberries to just because he’d seen her on the street one day? How could he not try to protect her? Her tiny hand was lost in his own for a moment, and he almost screamed in frustration right then and there.

Daryl let go of her hand and faced Karen next. She would be easier. He didn’t know her at all, other than the fact that she was a grade below his at school. They shook hands briefly, avoiding each other’s gaze.

And now Rick Grimes. The merchant’s son was a couple of inches taller than him, and he looked up to meet the shockingly blue eyes of the boy who had become his competitor. Rick’s handsome features were carefully composed, but Daryl recognized a flash of fear in his eyes that reminded him of the way prey looked just before a crossbow bolt ended their life. He grasped Rick’s hand, which was warm and firm, like a rock that had been baking in the sun.

Something in his gut twisted as they stared each other down during the minuscule amount of time spent shaking hands, and Daryl realized that he did not want to kill this boy. He did not want to see Rick’s life end in the arena. Somehow, he admired him for being brave enough to take his younger brother’s place. What kind of love and loyalty must Rick feel for his family to even consider putting his life on the line for them? For a brief moment, his eyes locked with Rick’s, and jealousy reared its ugly head, hissing and spitting fire like some sort of mythical beast. Daryl had never experienced a bond that strong. All he knew of love was the sharp words at the end of a barbed tongue and the scars crisscrossing his back.

Quit being such a pussy, he told himself after he had let go of Rick’s hand and the anthem began to play over the loudspeakers. He couldn’t spend his time feeling sorry for himself, not with the Games looming ahead like a thundercloud. What did it matter that his family was completely devoid of normal family ties and he’d never, not once in his life, felt any sort of connection to them? He remembered that he’d loved his mother in the way that four year olds do, but he couldn’t summon even an inkling of what that had felt like. He knew that he had loved her, he just couldn’t quite remember how.

The last few notes of the anthem echoed through the square, and a group of Peacekeepers in white uniforms surrounded the four tributes, herding them through the front door of the Justice Building so they could say goodbye to their families and friends. Daryl’s eyes caught a glimpse of Rick’s dark brown curls escorted through a door before he was ushered into his own small room. The door shut behind him, and the quiet click of the latch felt very much like a death sentence.

Daryl numbly sat down on the red velvet couch, the cushion sinking in an unfamiliar way, his eyes not focusing on anything in the room. He vaguely registered that the room was the most richly furnished that he’d ever been in, but before he could look around, Merle’s angry voice dragged his attention to the door.

“I ain’t gonna wait another two goddamn minutes! I know you got my brother in there, you lyin’ sack of shit! You think I’m fuckin’ stupid or somethin’? Open the fuckin’ door, or you gonna lose some teeth!”

Daryl nibbled his bottom lip as the Peacekeeper outside his door said something he couldn’t make out. He wouldn’t put it past Merle to throw some punches if he wanted in. Dumb fucker could never keep his temper in line.

“Bring it on, if you’re man enough. Take it up the damn chain of command if you’re a pussy. Or you can just fuckin’ kiss my lily-white ass, I’m going in there.”

There was the sound of a brief scuffle before the door whipped open and slammed into the wall with a bang before bouncing back toward Merle. The Peacekeeper outside evidently didn’t think it was worth getting into a fight over another minute’s worth of waiting.

Merle stomped into the room, looking madder than Daryl had ever seen him before, and before Daryl could say anything, his older brother had grabbed the front of his shirt with one hand and lifted him off the couch. They were practically nose to nose, Daryl could almost feel the rage radiating off of him like a bonfire.

“Don’t you dare fuckin’ lose them Games. Don’t you fuckin’ dare. You’re gonna come home, ya hear me? It don’t matter that there’s forty-seven of them other motherfuckers. You’re gonna show them that Dixons ain’t fuckin’ pussies. I didn’t waste all my goddamn effort on you to see you bitch out. You’re gonna show them sonofabitches how fuckin’ good ya are with a crossbow, and you’re gonna win.”

Daryl was speechless. He’d never heard something even remotely close to encouragement come out of Merle’s mouth. They stared at each other for a few seconds, one pair of blue eyes smoldering with anger and a trace of fear, the other pair widened with shock and confusion.

And then two figures in white were on either side of Merle, practically dragging him out of the room as he fought against them, yelling like a madman and spit and profanities flying from his mouth. Just as Daryl came to his senses and realized what was happening, Merle was gone.

He blinked at the door, not sure what to do and trying to process what Merle had just told him. It was like Merle needed him to win, and not just for the tesserae that kept them alive. Did his brother’s heart have a gold center underneath that pitch black exterior? Before he was able to regain his composure, the door opened again.

It was almost like hearing his name called at the reaping again. The same silent shock that shook him to his core, the temporary paralysis that locked his muscles in place. The iron bands around his chest that made him forget how to breathe. It was like he’d been torn from the present and ruthlessly hurled thirteen years into the past. She had the same black, curly hair, the same kind blue eyes. It had to be some sort of sick joke. It couldn’t be fucking true.

But then, this woman’s cheekbones were lower, and her lips were different, her bottom lip was fuller than her top. Daryl blinked, and the image of his mother disappeared. It was a woman he’d never met in his life. Her eyes were rimmed in red and streaks of black mascara were visible on her cheeks, and oddly, she didn’t seem to be trying to hide it. Daryl was used to people hiding any emotion other than anger at all costs, so he wasn’t sure how to handle this woman’s tears.

“Hello, Daryl, is it?” Her voice was quiet and trembled slightly.

He snapped his jaw shut and narrowed his eyes at her, sinking back into his automatic defensive stance. “Who’re you?”

“I’m Mrs. Grimes, dear. I’m Rick’s mother,” she said sadly, and moved forward to take his hands in hers.

Rick’s mother? Why the in the blue fuck would Rick’s goddamn mother come to visit him? She knew that they would be trying to kill each other in a matter of days, and she must have just said goodbye to him. Daryl twitched from the contact, but he didn’t try to pull away. Was she going to try and guilt him into not killing her son?

Mrs. Grimes guided him back to the couch and sat him down. She lifted a hand slowly, pausing when Daryl flinched, but continued on and placed it gently on his cheek. Her fingers were cold, but her palm was warm. She didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at him with an expression that Daryl couldn’t identify.

“You look so much like your mother,” she said, tilting her head to one side. She smiled sadly when Daryl’s eyes flew open at the mention of his mother. Had this woman known her?

“Yes, we were friends before she died,” Mrs. Grimes said, seeing the confusion on Daryl’s face. She took her hand away from his cheek and fished something out of the pocket of her dress and held it out to him. “This was hers.”

In her hand was a necklace, a plain silver chain with three pendants on it. The largest pendant was about half an inch in diameter and fashioned in the shape of a Cherokee rose. The white petals were artfully crafted, the edges curling in slightly toward the bright yellow center. Two feathered wings made from simple pieces of copper flanked the flower, one on each side. Daryl lifted it carefully, tears pricking at his eyes and threatening to well over. Everything of his mother’s had seemed to disappear from the house after her death without a trace. His fingers clenched around the silver chain, the metal cutting into his skin, and he held it out toward Mrs. Grimes for her to take it back, avoiding her gaze. Good fucking Lord, this day would not stop taking him by surprise. He really needed to get himself under control. What would Merle say if he saw him sniffling like a girl over a goddamn necklace?

Rick’s mother held up her hands and shook her head. “It’s yours, dear. It was never mine to keep.” And she stood up, smiled sadly at Daryl one last time, and left the room.

Daryl stared at the necklace, wondering what the pendants had meant to his mother, before he realized he hadn’t thanked Mrs. Grimes. He had only expected Merle and maybe Madge to visit him, since they were the only two people he figured actually somewhat cared about him. The door opened again before Daryl could figure out how to feel about her unexpected kindness and about his lack of conversation with her. He quickly threw the silver chain over his head and tucked the necklace under his shirt collar, taking comfort from the cold metal around his neck. No one else needed to know about it.

“Daryl?” Madge was in the doorway, looking hesitant. Her eyes were red like Rick’s mother’s had been, but she wasn’t crying, which Daryl appreciated.

He started to move toward her, but didn’t quite know how to approach her, so he stopped a few feet away. He settled for just apologizing, even if came out as a halfhearted mumble. “Hell, I’m sorry about what happened earlier. Bein’ a dumbass.”

“You were scared. It’s okay,” she said, looking as awkward as he felt. Daryl bristled a little, he wasn’t a fucking baby, but he didn’t want to fuck things up any more than he already had so he kept his mouth shut. They stood like that for a moment, neither of them saying anything and trying not to make too much eye contact.

Madge suddenly moved toward him and closed the distance with a few strides. Daryl flinched away from her instinctively, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and all of a sudden she had wrapped her arms tightly around his torso. Daryl stiffened, not sure what to make of it. He brought his hands up and gingerly touched her upper arms, reluctant to hug her back.

She let go of him and stared at him fiercely. "I know you can win, Daryl. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met." And with that, she whirled away from him and left the room, leaving him thunderstruck and confused for the third time in the last hour.

A Peacekeeper entered and stood to one side of the door. “The train leaves in ten minutes.”

Daryl nodded, hoping the Peacekeeper couldn’t read whatever expression was on his face. Seeing Merle and Madge for the last time had been rough. Not that he wasn’t used to rough, it was just the kind of emotional baggage he didn’t need when fighting forty-seven other kids for his life. His father hadn’t shown, which Daryl had honestly sort of hoped that he would, but maybe that was for the better. There was no way Will Dixon could cut him down any more. He was free from him now.

The Peacekeeper ushered him from the room and into a car, something Daryl had never been in before. He sat nervously by himself in the back seat, trying to stay calm. There were three more cars in front of him, probably with Sophia, Karen, and Rick.

Daryl never thought he would live to see the day that he would be thankful for being on the receiving end of his father's fists, but he was almost thankful for it now. At the station, reporters instantly swarmed him, their cameras honing in on him and capturing his every move. He kept his expression blank, something he'd learned from the years of abuse, and tried not to watch the other four tributes as they were all herded toward the train by a group of Peacekeepers that parted the crowd for them. Effie paraded in front of them, waving to the cameras and smiling grandly, and Daryl felt like throwing something at her.

He felt panic flaring up again as he was forced to stand in the doorway of one of the train cars and let the cameras flash at him until he went blind. He gripped the doorway so hard his knuckles turned white, and breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally allowed inside and the doors closed behind them.

Daryl had never been on a train either. He did his best to look either bored or hostile as the four of them were led toward their quarters. He was starting to feel like one of the livestock that District 10 tended to.

They were each given their own chambers, which were fancier than even the room he'd been in in the Justice Building. The bedroom and dressing area was carpeted in thick, dark green plush, the walls were covered in tan and gold patterned wallpaper. Generic paintings were hung up, and the bed was covered with a thick comforter and downy pillows. The bathroom was complete with a shower stall with a gold-colored showerhead and hot and cold running water. Daryl had never had a shower before, and hot water was only available if he boiled it at home.

Effie had told him that he could wear anything he wanted in the dresser, do anything he wanted, and that he only had to be ready for dinner in an hour. So Daryl had shut the door in her face, and promptly searched the room for hidden cameras or microphones.

Twenty minutes later, he came up short, so he padded into the bathroom, and decided to figure out how a shower worked. He carefully placed his mother's necklace on the sink, and stripped, avoiding looking at his reflection in the huge, full-length mirror as he did. The hot water spraying onto his shoulders was pleasant. It unknotted some of the tension he'd worked up and helped him clear his head. Steam rose out of the stall, fogging up every reflective surface. Daryl didn’t mind that at all as he marched, naked except for his mother’s necklace and a fluffy towel wrapped around his waist, out of the bathroom toward the dresser and began pulling clothes out of it to find something to wear.

Except that everything in the fucking drawers was most definitely not something he’d ever wear in a million years. The first thing he found was a deep purple jacket with green and gold trim and padded shoulders, which he stared at incredulously for a moment before throwing to the floor. Daryl practically growled as he dug through the sea of silk and other strange fabrics that all seemed to be colored teal, bright yellow, pink, purple, turquoise, blood red or lime green before he finally found a plain black long sleeved T-shirt that seemed to be made out of plain cotton. He ripped the sleeves off for good measure and added a black leather vest with feathered wings on the back that had caught his eye at the bottom of the drawer.

Pants took even longer. Why in the world did a guy need tan pants that looked like they weren’t long enough to go past his calf? He also found what looked like the matching pair for the purple jacket, which ended up joining their counterpart on the ground. When a pair of dark gray pants finally came up, Daryl yanked them on and stormed out of his room barefoot and thoroughly annoyed, leaving the clothes strewn on the floor. He didn’t want to see what the shoes that were assigned to him were like.

He met Effie in the hallway, who had been coming to collect him for dinner and eyed his choice of clothes disapprovingly. She squeaked as he shoved past her and kept going until he entered the compartment that was undoubtedly where dinner was going to be served. The rectangular table in the middle was set with what looked like extremely expensive and breakable dishes, and it was already occupied by Hershel and the other three tributes, Sophia and Karen on one side and Rick on the other. The seat next to Rick was empty.

Daryl regretted that the table wasn’t longer so he could grab the chair and move it away from everyone else. He didn’t want to have dinner with these people, he didn’t want to get to know them and then watch them die a horrible death in the arena. It would be bad enough watching everyone else he didn’t know meet their end.

He sat down, crossing his legs Indian-style on the chair, his knees resting on the armrests. Effie pursed her lips at him but didn’t say anything, just sat down in her own seat on one of the short ends of the table opposite to Hershel. “I hope you’re all hungry!” She said brightly, beaming as the first course was brought out.

Good Lord, she was annoying. She had probably never missed a single meal in her entire life. “You got any idea of where we just came from? ‘Course we’re fucking hungry,” Daryl snapped at her. Sophia let out a little gasp, looking horrorstruck, and Rick and Karen stared at him with wide eyes.

“There’s no need for that kind of language, young man,” Hershel said, giving him a stern look. The white- haired old mentor didn’t seem upset, rather, he was looking at Daryl with all the understanding and compassion in the world. It made him uneasy, and he immediately got defensive, getting up from his chair and glowering at Hershel.

“The hell do you know about it, old man? You ain’t got nothing to worry about, all you do is sit up in your big old mansion doin’ who knows what all day,” Daryl sneered, and threw off Rick’s attempt to put a hand on his arm and calm him down. “Keep your hands off me!”

He knew that what he said wasn’t true in the slightest, he couldn’t imagine how in the hell Hershel managed to live with getting to know all the District 12 tributes and then watching them all die, but he needed to put some distance between himself and everyone else. Maybe even do Hershel a favor and keep the old guy from liking him.

Sophia’s terrified face was what got him to shut up. The little girl had shrunk back into her chair, trembling with her arms wrapped around her knees. At the sight of her, Daryl shot angry glares at everyone sitting at the table to hide his embarrassment, before sitting down and muttering, “Can’t go nowhere without some jackass tryin’ to tell me what to do.”

Dinner was silent and extremely awkward, but it was nothing like Daryl had ever tasted before. It came in courses, first a chilled cucumber soup that was followed by a pear salad with crumbled cheese and nuts he’d never seen before. When Karen tentatively asked what they were, Effie explained that they were called “pecans.” Next was lamb chops and mashed potatoes, then sliced fruit and crackers topped with cheese, and at the end, an enormous chocolate cake dripping with icing was brought out.

All four of them ate like they’d been told this would be their last meal on Earth, which was a disturbing thought. Effie watched them haughtily, sipping delicately from her wine glass and looking a bit miffed for reasons Daryl couldn’t fathom. He ignored her and continued sticking his finger in the icing on the leftover cake slices and licking it off. He wasn’t used to the intense sugary taste, but he enjoyed it all the same. He figured he might as well put on a few pounds before the Games started, he wasn’t the best-fed to begin with and who knew how much food there would be to hunt in the arena.

When Effie led them into another compartment to watch the recap of the reapings in the other districts, Daryl fought the urge to throw up and had to wrap his arms around his stomach to keep it from feeling like it was going to burst. He noticed that the Karen and Sophia looked a little green too. None of them were used to the rich food that the Capitol citizens enjoyed every day. Rick was the only one out of the four of them who had had such fare before, but he had his arms wrapped around his middle like Daryl did.

The recaps took forever to watch. Daryl fidgeted the entire time, unable to sit still, and grew increasingly nervous and hopeless the more he watched. His worst imaginations of the sheer number of tributes he would be facing hadn’t owned up to all of the kids he was seeing now. Name after name after name…

A few stuck out in his mind. An older boy with an eye patch from District 1. A soft-looking blond girl from District 3. A tall, stick- thin girl with dark brown hair that reached her waist from District 8. A pair of sisters by the name of “Greene” from District 10. And last of all, District 12. Daryl watched, sick with fear and dismay, as Sophia was called up, then Karen, then Rick. The desperation and agony in his voice was obvious, and the commentators remarked on his “fighting spirit,” as they called it, as he punched and battled his way to where Carl was. The camera zoomed in on his face, which to Rick’s credit was tense and nervous, but not frightened or panicked. Daryl noticed that the crowd’s lack of applause had been cut out of the recap.

Then Daryl watched himself go rigid and wide-eyed after his name was called, saw the way he almost immediately looked toward his left, where Merle was off-camera. He was a little frustrated by how long it took him to compose himself and glare at Effie before marching up to the stage and taking his place, but he was satisfied with his complete and utter lack of emotion afterward. He hoped Merle was happy, well, as happy as Merle could get, with how bored he appeared after the initial shock had worn off.

The sleek TV shut itself off after the anthem was finished. Daryl’s eyes darted around the room, gauging the other tributes’ reactions. Sophia looked like she was going to cry, Karen was pale and stony-faced, and Rick was staring back at him. Their eyes locked, and Daryl felt his heart start to pound. Rick’s piercing blue eyes dropped for just a second, his lips parted infinitesimally and he glanced back at Daryl with a heated expression before looking away quickly.

Daryl had no idea what to make of it. What the hell had Rick been looking at? Had he imagined that heated stare? Warmth pooled in his chest, and he realized he was still staring at the back of Rick’s head.

“Well, that was rather exciting! Why don’t you all go to bed now, tomorrow’s going to be a big day!” Effie stood up, smiling at the four of them, and they wordlessly left the compartment and headed toward their respective rooms. Daryl watched Rick like a hawk, trying to catch anything that the other boy might let off about what had just happened, but Rick only said “Goodnight” to him in a quiet voice before he went into his room.

Daryl opened the door to his own room, his head swimming with confusion. He stripped and curled up under the thick blankets on the bed, burrowing himself into a cocoon. He wished he had some sort of experience to draw back on, something that would give him a clue as to what Rick was feeling. Was Rick interested in him? He pushed that thought away, there was no way that someone like Rick would ever be attracted to someone like him. They were about to try and kill each other, for fuck’s sake. Rick was probably just trying to throw him off, make him lose his focus. And besides, what would Merle say? His older brother would be watching his every move on TV during the Games, and there would be no room for weakness.

The thought of Merle yelling at him for chasing after someone during the worst possible time made him smile tentatively to himself. And then he broke down, sobbing uncontrollably and tears soaking his pillow. As the bottle he’d carefully stored every single urge to scream or cry or panic in since his name was called exploded, he hoped the walls were thick so no one would hear him.

Daryl slept fitfully, his heart aching with loneliness and his dreams plagued by staring blue eyes.

Chapter Text

Pale sunlight was streaming through the small window when a sharp rapping sound accompanied by a shrill voice that could only be Effie’s roused Daryl awake. “Up, up, up! It’s going to be a big, big, big day!”

Good Lord. For the second time, Daryl wished he had something to throw at the door to shut her up. He groaned quietly, kicking off the thick comforter and swinging his legs off the bed. Not even bothering to root through the dresser again, he slipped on the black pants, long-sleeved shirt and leather vest he’d worn last night, and then padded into the bathroom.

Staring into the smaller mirror hanging above the sink, Daryl scrutinized his reflection, twisting his mouth at the damage done by his bout of crying. He turned on the faucet and splashed cold water onto his face, rubbing the sleep from his eyes at the same time. Looking back up into the mirror, he nodded to himself. The only evidence that remained were the heavy bags under his eyes, but he could easily attribute that to a sleepless night. He pulled his long bangs in front of his face to hide anything else he might have missed and to keep his hostile appearance up. He’d spent his whole life proving that Dixons were the toughest assholes in Panem, he wasn’t about to lose that reputation just because he’d been reaped.

Daryl left his room and stole down the hallway quietly before taking his place at the breakfast table as fluidly and inconspicuously as possible. The table was piled high with food and various pitchers and thermoses holding an array of drinks both hot and cold. Effie seemed somewhat bedraggled, clutching a mug of black coffee, but Sophia and Karen looked as happy as a tribute could be at their current stage as they loaded their plates with a little bit of everything. Rick was the only one who seemed truly uncomfortable as he quietly dunked a roll in a mug of creamy brown liquid. Hershel looked like absolute shit and was leaning heavily on one of his elbows, rubbing his temple and holding his hand in a way that shielded his eyes from the bright light shining in from the windows and down from the chandelier. The other hand was wrapped around a mug that looked like it contained coffee.

Daryl recognized the symptoms with a flash of dismay. Hershel was hungover. He’d seen the man at the Hob on multiple occasions, giving handfuls of money to the woman who sold liquor, but he didn’t realize that the guy had a problem. Fuck. Daryl didn’t understand why he hadn’t realized it sooner, he’d been around a constant drunk for the majority of his life.

Effie immediately noticed that he hadn’t taken any food yet. “Go on, eat up, it’s going to be a big day! You’ll meet your prep team and your stylist, and then there’s the parade! Goodness, I’m so excited, there will be so many tributes to see, I hope the stylists have prepared wonderful costumes for the Quarter Quell…”

Daryl tuned her jabbering out and kept an eye on Hershel as he reached for the bacon, something he’d had only once in his life when he’d managed to kill a boar and the butcher had given him a pack of it from the meat. Feral pigs were rarely seen in the woods near his house. He usually avoided them but the one he’d shot had already been wounded by some other predator. Without Merle, it had been a nightmare to drag home, but he’d gotten a decent price for the meat.

Daryl ate slowly, helping himself to anything that looked good and sucking down five mugs of hot chocolate, the creamy liquid that Rick had been dunking his roll in. He glanced at the other boy tribute on occasion, still confused about what had happened the night before, but didn’t let his gaze wander to anyone else. Effie was annoying as all hell, looking at Sophia was simply painful, he didn’t want to get to know Karen too well, and Hershel was suddenly a drunkard who may or may not be fit to mentor them for the Games.

Once his stomach felt like it was about to split open, Daryl stopped eating and forced himself to observe the white- haired victor more closely. He looked a little better than when Daryl had first stepped into the dining car, but the guy hadn’t made any attempt at conversation and seemed just as closed off as usual. Daryl suddenly realized that he hadn’t even given any of them advice on the upcoming Games yet. Unless he’d already talked to one or all of the other tributes in private and ignored Daryl, which would not only be insulting but also potentially hazardous for the idiot who thought he couldn’t be a serious contender.

The natural daylight spilling from the windows suddenly vanished, leaving the room lit only by the chandelier on the ceiling. Sophia let out a little squeak of fright.

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re passing through the tunnel that will take us to the Capitol,” Effie said brightly. “We should be there in about twenty minutes.” The tunnel was built under a range of mountains that cut off the Capitol from the eastern districts. The geological barriers were the main reason the rebels lost the war against the Capitol fifty years ago, as they were forced to scale the mountains, they were easy targets for the Capitol’s air forces. Their loss had resulted in the beginning of the Hunger Games as a yearly reminder to the districts that the rebellion was something not to be repeated.

Twenty minutes. Daryl noticed that Rick was looking at Hershel expectantly, like he was waiting for him to say something. With a jolt, Daryl realized that that meant he hadn’t received any advice from the mentor. Out of all of them, Rick seemed the most likely to pull sponsors, even if Daryl could whip him blindfolded in survival skills and hunting. So if Hershel hadn’t even talked to Rick, that meant he hadn’t talked to anybody.

A ball of rage built up in Daryl’s chest. No wonder none of the District 12 tributes after Hershel had ever won the Games. Most of them were underfed and lacked any sort of training or skills, but some had been strong enough to still stand a chance. Their mentor was their lifeline, the one who lined up sponsors and distributed gifts that could be the difference between life and death. Either Hershel didn’t bother to try and persuade rich people to donate some of their money, or they didn’t want to deal with him due to his drinking problem.

“You gonna give us any advice?” Daryl growled, and suddenly Hershel was met by the expectant gazes of all four tributes.

He blinked blearily at them for a moment, as if he was confused by Daryl’s question. “Advice?”

“Yeah, advice. You got any for us?” Daryl suddenly wondered if Hershel had ever even tried to help any of the tributes he was supposed to have mentored.

“Stay alive,” Hershel said gruffly, then looked back down at his cup of coffee, shrinking back into his antisocial hangover shell.

Daryl stared at him incredulously. He’d just given the guy an honest-to-God plea for help, and he had dismissed it like it didn’t matter. He fought the urge to leap up and punch him.

“That’s it?” Karen asked, sounding upset and her face scrunched up like she was about to cry. “That’s all you have for us?”

“So what’s your plan? Finish that coffee? Drink your bottles at night and leave us to fend for ourselves?” Rick said angrily, glowering darkly at their mentor.

Hershel stared at him blankly for a moment, before saying, “Don’t tell me how to care for myself. You tributes are like a plague! I did the right thing, I tried to help them, but they just kept dying! There’s no hope. There’s no hope for any of you.”

Daryl was dumbstruck. Not only was Hershel not going to help them, he didn’t even want to.

“You can’t send us out there without even giving us any sort of plan!” Rick wasn’t yelling, but his voice had dropped an octave and his words had become more fierce and husky. Coupled with the anger flashing in his eyes, he looked more fearsome than Daryl had ever seen him.

“I gave you a plan! Stay alive!” Frustration and pain laced Hershel’s voice as his anger rose to meet Rick’s.

“Give us another one! We can’t go out there without anything!”

Hershel glared at him, looking deadly serious. For a moment, Daryl didn’t know if he was going to let Rick’s demand go unanswered or hit him. It was a long while before he heaved a heavy sight and said, “Fine. We’ll be at the station in a few minutes. When you get there, you’ll be put in the hands of your stylists. They’re going to do things that you’re not going to like, but don’t resist any of it.” He looked at each tribute in turn, trying to impress upon them the importance of what he was saying.

“But… what about the Games? What about the arena?” Sophia asked anxiously, her small voice speaking what each of them was thinking at that moment.

“We’re not there yet. Worry about the parade for now, and don’t resist.” And with that, Hershel got up and left the dining car, leaving the four tributes with Effie, who looked pale and unhappy about the fight. The five of them glanced awkwardly at each other, unsure what to say or how to feel about their mentor’s strange advice.

The train finally began to slow, the first change in speed it had made since leaving District 12. Bright light suddenly burst through the windows, flooding the compartment and bouncing off the silverware, half-blinding Daryl.

He couldn’t help it. Along with Rick, Karen, and Sophia, he got up from his chair and moved to the windows and took his first look at the Capitol, the shining city that ruled all of Panem.

Daryl had seen the city before on television, but he’d always thought that it wasn’t really as striking and grand as the cameras made it look. But he was dead wrong. If anything, the cameras hadn’t quite managed to capture the magnificence of the buildings that shot proudly toward the sky, edging a beautiful, serene lake in the front and bordered by picturesque mountains in the distance behind. Daryl could never have imagined the obvious richness and wealth of its citizens, who strolled through the city in bizarre, colorful clothes and drove shiny cars down the streets. People who had never missed a meal in their life. People who never dealt with money shortages. People who never worried if they or their children would be chosen to fight to the death in the Hunger Games.

As the train swept into the city, groups of the strange people began to point eagerly at the tribute train and turn their heads to talk excitedly with one another. Daryl turned away, sickened by their enthusiasm. They couldn’t wait for them to get into the arena and begin the bloodshed. Sophia covered her face and stopped standing on her tip toes so she sank below the bottom of the window, out of sight from the crowd. To Daryl’s disbelief, Rick was actually smiling and waving at the crowd. Karen, after seeing their excitement toward Rick’s friendliness, followed suit. They only stopped when the train pulled into the station and cut them off from the crowd’s view.

Rick turned away from the window and caught Daryl staring at him incredulously. He managed to look sheepish before he said, “Hey you never know, some of them could be sponsors.”

Daryl didn’t know what to say to that, but before a nasty comment left his mouth, the doors slide open and Effie ushered them all off the train. The station was much more richly designed than the one at District 12, with a high, arching ceiling and large windows to let in daylight. Daryl was relieved to see that there was no one else in sight.

“What about our things? I left my grandmother’s watch in my room,” Karen said, looking worriedly at Effie as they followed her across the platform.

“Not to worry, someone will bring everything you left behind to the rooms you’ll be given here. It’s lovely what they’ve done to the place in honor of the Quarter Quell, the Capitol has spared no expense, they’ve had completely new quarters for the tributes made and remodeled the Training Center and…”

By then, Effie had swept them through a door and they were met by no less than twelve garish people who immediately rushed to them, practically squealing in delight. Three of them surrounded Daryl, piping to each other in their silly Capitol accents and grabbing his arms and pinching and poking him.

“Look at him, Flavius, I knew he would be a good one!” One of them said happily, Daryl couldn’t tell if they were a he or a she, and another nodded enthusiastically.

Daryl smacked their probing hands away and tried to back up. They were too close, the bright colors and makeup they wore hurt his eyes, and holy fucking shit why wouldn’t they stop touching him!?

They took no notice, and one of them, whose entire body had been dyed a weird shade of green, wrapped a hand around his upper arm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Come on, we’ve only got a few hours before the parade starts!”

Daryl gritted his teeth and forced himself to be dragged along, but not without a backward glance to find Rick before he rounded a corner. The other boy tribute was being hauled along in a similar fashion to him by three more strangely dressed people, but in a different direction. Daryl resisted the urge to call out to him.

A few minutes later, he was pulled into a sleek room filled with various tools and fabrics that he figured was the Remake Center, where tributes were beautified and put into their costumes for the parade. His prep team had introduced themselves along the way, and Daryl tentatively assumed that he had two women, Venia and Octavia, and a man, Flavius, attending to him. The weird names weren’t helping him make the distinction.

“All right! Strip and put this on!” Flavius declared, and the three of them looked at him expectantly as he handed Daryl a thin robe that looked like it wouldn’t cover anything important. Daryl took it hesitantly, irritated at the way they’d dragged him through the building, before glaring at them.

“You gonna watch?” He snapped, and they sighed in unison, before rolling their eyes and turning around dutifully. He stripped quickly and pulled the robe on, trying to make sure his torso and most of his legs were covered, feeling extremely self-conscious.

They had him sit in a chair, which was actually pretty comfortable, until Venia, the woman with gold tattoos above her eyebrows and blue hair, pulled his head back so his neck rested in a little notch in the back of the chair and sprayed warm water onto his hair. His neck ached in the position, and his hunter’s instincts went crazy as he stared up at the ceiling, unable to see anything else around him. Normally, he would resort to relying on his ears, but the noise from the water spray blocked out the subtle noises he was usually able to pick up. As Venia washed his hair, Octavia and Flavius attended to his fingernails, scraping the dirt out from underneath them and turning them into matching shapes.

Daryl resorted to clenching and unclenching his jaw to keep himself still, and Hershel’s words were the only thing that kept him from leaping out of the chair and sprinting down the hallway. Don’t resist. That was proving to be much more difficult than he had thought.

Venia’s fingers carded through his hair and her fingernail lightly scratched his scalp, which was both pleasant and uncomfortable. Daryl wasn’t used to anyone taking care of him, he had no idea how to react to these people who were suddenly working on him with actual excitement and no holds barred. What was he supposed to say when a woman with blue hair and gold tattoos above her eyebrows said that he had amazing hair? How was he supposed to feel when a man wearing purple lipstick told him that his fingernails were filthy and he needed to take better care of them, and a woman who had deliberately dyed herself green agreed with him?

Despite all of that, he knew exactly how to react when they told him to take off the robe so they could “scrub him down.”

“I ain’t takin’ it off.”

“Oh, honey, there’s no reason to be embarrassed,” Octavia started, but Daryl interrupted her.

“I ain’t some useless piece of shit, I can do whatever the hell you want myself. But I ain’t taking this damn thing off.”

“Daryl!” Venia squeaked, clapping her hands to her mouth at the offensive words.

“Daryl, we need to do the scrubbing ourselves. Even if you had the range of motion to reach the hard spots like in between your shoulder blades, we would still need to look you over to make sure every single inch of skin is perfectly clean,” Flavius explained, his Capitol accent sounding even stranger in a lower and more serious tone of voice.

Hershel’s words echoed through Daryl’s head. Don’t resist.

It wasn’t a matter of them seeing him naked, although that was also a problem, it was a matter of his scars. He was sure his prep team had never dealt with someone like him, and he wasn’t quite sure how they would react, although he had a feeling it wouldn’t be something he’d want to deal with. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, struggling to work up the courage to undo the robe.

“Daryl, I promise we’ve done this hundreds of times. There’s no need to be ashamed,” Octavia said gently, exaggerating even in her moment of seriousness.

The simple, unassuming sentence was the tipping point that turned Daryl's emotions from a thundercloud into a tornado, whirling madly inside of him and wreaking havoc. Ashamed. If only she knew what went on in his daily life. If only she knew the story behind each scar. Yes, he was ashamed to his core of his family, unwilling to live up to the Dixon family’s reputation for being criminals and useless drunks, but unable to get away from it either. Everywhere he went, everyone he talked to, he put up a pretense, and sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. Merle thought he was a Dixon through and through. His father thought he was a useless bitch. Everyone else in the entire fucking world thought he was trash.

He squared his jaw and met her sympathetic expression evenly. “No.”

Octavia opened her mouth to say something, but Flavius put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. “I think we’ve done all we can do. Let’s get Carol.”

Daryl watched them with a steely gaze as they filed out of the room, and then sat down heavily, dreading the moment they came back. No doubt this Carol, his stylist, would make him take off the robe.

Only a few minutes passed before the door opened and a woman that must have been Carol entered. She was alone, and the first thing that Daryl noticed was how normal she looked. She had very short natural-looking gray hair that curled at the ends, and she was dressed in a floor- length black dress that draped around her slim figure nicely and a long tan sleeveless shirt that was open at the front. She wore earrings and several necklaces, and the only makeup that Daryl could see was some sort of black stuff around her eyes that emphasized their light blue color and made her long eyelashes stand out. Although she was obviously a Capitol citizen, and despite his disgust for their excessively strange fashions, Daryl couldn’t help thinking how pretty she was.

“Hello, Daryl, I’m Carol, your stylist. Flavius told me there was a problem with your robe, do you want to tell me about it?” Her voice was quiet and extremely unaffected by the Capitol’s accent, and Daryl was taken aback by how gentle she sounded.

“No,” he said gruffly, unsure whether he could trust her or not.

She smiled, but Daryl couldn’t tell if she was amused or just being nice. “All right. I’ll find something for you to cover yourself with, but all that dirt needs to come off eventually, and someone is going to have to do it for you. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Daryl bit his lip. “It ain’t that. It’s… I got…”

“Spit it out, Daryl,” Carol said, not unkindly.

He sighed heavily. “Just… don’t freak out, okay?” Still sitting, he untied the robe and let the fabric fall from his shoulders and half- uncover his arms. The fabric pooled around his waist, covering the important bits, and his arms were still covered from the elbows down. His entire upper body was exposed, and he didn’t look at Carol as her eyes roamed over the scars on his torso. He waited for a gasp of horror, or a demand to know who did this to him, or an outcry of “Oh, you poor thing!”

What he didn’t expect was for her to smile in a sorrowful kind of way before saying, “Want to see mine?”

Daryl was thankful she took his bug-eyed stare as a “Sure, why not, this isn’t fuckin’ weird or anything,” instead of labeling him as a creep.

Carol slipped out of the tan shirt and pulled the zipper on the back of her dress halfway down her back. The black fabric fell away, revealing pale skin that was littered with marks similar to his. He recognized a couple of cigarette burns, but the rest were too vague to stand out as anything specific. Carol watched him for a moment, gauging his reaction, before she twisted her arm behind her back and tried to pull her zipper back up awkwardly. Daryl stepped forward automatically to help her, and then she turned to face him.

“I had a husband. He swept me off my feet the first day we met, and I let myself be blind to his temper. He promised me he would change, and we got married in less than a year. I was married to that man for twenty- five years. We had a little girl…” Carol paused for a moment, blinking furiously and wiping away the wetness in her eyes with her slender fingers. “He killed her. Not directly, but it was his fault. She was so fearful.”

She looked at him, a fierce light shining in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter who it is, Daryl. Find a way to stop it. Because nobody should live like that.”

Daryl lowered his gaze and stared at the floor for a few seconds before looking back up at her and nodding. He wasn’t about to spill his guts. Nothing he could do about the situation anyway. But he did appreciate that nothing she had said contained the words “if you survive.”

“Let’s get you ready for the parade, okay?” Carol handed him a scrap of cloth and politely turned her back so he could strip and pull it on, it turned out to be a pair of undershorts. She directed him to a bathtub, filled it with hot water, and spent the next half hour scrubbing him relentlessly with a gritty foam that not only washed off the dirt and sweat but took at least three layers of skin with it.

Afterward, she handed him a pair of simple black pants and a black shirt to wear before she took something she called an “electric razor” and trimmed the little bit of scruff he’d managed to grow in the last year. Daryl grumbled unhappily the whole time. He’d worked hard to grow that.

As he was rubbing his chin in the mirror, assessing the damage to his beard, Carol checked her watch and frowned. “We only have an hour. You’ll have to miss lunch, but you’ll be able to eat right after the opening ceremony. Can you hold on until then?”

It wasn’t until Daryl shot her a look that she realized her slipup. “Missin’ a meal ain’t hardly worth whinin’ about,” he said, shrugging it off.

Carol watched him impassively. “How awful we must be to you.”

Daryl shrugged again, unwilling to hurt her feelings, but he could tell that she knew how he really felt about the Capitol citizens. They never missed a meal in their lives, whereas in District 12, going hungry was a daily occurrence. He wondered how any of them would react if they were told to live his life for just a week.

Carol turned away from him and pulled out a huge black bag packed with makeup. She sat him down and busied herself for the next twenty minutes putting the stuff on his face before finally sitting back and smiling, satisfied with her work.

Daryl went to the mirror and stared at his reflection. Carol had somehow managed to make him look… hot? His eyes were huger than normal and the black eyeliner… or eyeshadow, whatever, made them look incredibly blue. Any marks on his face that he’d gotten from the woods or his family had been hidden beneath a layer of makeup that evened out his skin and highlighted his cheekbones. But even with all of it on, he could still clearly see his own familiar face underneath it.

He suddenly wondered if Rick was wearing makeup. Before he could ask Carol what was happening to the other tributes she steered him away from the mirror and out the door.

“We’ve only got a little while to get you all into your costumes and in the chariots. You and Rick will be in one of them, Sophia and Karen will be in the other,” she said as she hurried him down the wide hallway and into an elevator.

“We got coal miner outfits?” Daryl asked. For the parade, the tributes were supposed to wear something that reflected their respective district’s main industry. District 4, fishing. District 10, livestock. District 2, weapons. Tributes from District 12 usually wore some kind of coal miner costume, and they were always awful and never did anything to win the favor of the crowd. One year, the tributes had been buck naked and covered in black powder that represented coal dust. Daryl fervently hoped Carol didn’t think that nudity was the latest trend in fashion.

“No, we think that’s become very overdone. My partner and I came up with something different for you, something that will represent the purpose of the coal itself. Are you afraid of fire, Daryl?” Carol smiled at him mischievously. By then, they had arrived at the bottom level of the Remake Center, which was basically a giant stable. Daryl felt overwhelmed as he took in the sheer number of tributes all in the same place. They were everywhere. Signs hung from the ceiling, each marked with a number from 1 through 12 and a good distance away from its neighbors, indicating the meeting place and chariots for all four of a district’s tributes.

Carol directed him toward the sign labeled 12, weaving through the crowd of stylists, tributes, and horses. They met Hershel, Rick, Sophia, and Karen there along with Carol’s partner Portia, their two assistants, and all four prep teams. Daryl was relieved to see that Rick was in an identical outfit as his and the two girls looked similar. He stared at Rick for a moment, who was wearing makeup and looked very, very attractive in it. He looked away quickly before the other boy noticed his gawping.

Portia, Carol, and the younger assistants came toward the tributes carrying four black leather jackets, one for each of them. As Daryl slipped into the jacket, which fit tightly to his torso and his arms, Carol said, “We’re going to light these on fire right before your chariot leaves. Don’t worry,” she added with a smile after seeing the expression on his face, “it’s only synthetic. You’ll be safe.”

Daryl wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t have time to worry about it before she had zipped the zipper for him and directed him into his carriage. By then, he could hear the opening music starting to play over the loudspeakers. The two chariots for District 1 were already in position to leave in front of the wide doors that led to the promenade they would be riding down. District 2 was right behind them.

Daryl stared nervously at the four coal-black horses in front of him. They were so well-trained, nobody was holding their reins to direct them where to go. He heard Carol talking, trying to get the four of them loaded before it was their turn to leave. Rick suddenly appeared next to him, looking ashen.

“If I start screaming, get this thing off of me, please,” he said to Daryl through gritted teeth. Evidently, he was just as worried about the “synthetic” fire as Daryl was.

“Rip yours off if you rip mine off,” Daryl muttered back. He was trying to keep himself from staring at Rick too openly. The older boy looked really, really good in the costume and makeup, maybe almost too good. Rick’s leather jacket made the muscles on his chest and arms look much more defined and his shoulders seemed even broader, if that was possible. He looked exactly like a tribute should: strong, confident, fearless. He was sure the crowd would screaming Rick’s name by the end of the parade.

The massive, wide doors began to roll open, revealing the promenade lined by crowds of Capitol citizens sitting in stadium- type seats on either side. The chariots for District 1 immediately moved forward, pulled by teams of white horses, and they were met with adoring cheers and screams from the crowds. They made luxury items for the Capitol, so they had been spray painted silver and were wearing tasteful tunics glittering with jewels. They were always a favorite.

In no time, the carriage in front of them holding Karen and Sophia had reached the doors. Carol and Portia quickly stepped up to them, holding blazing torches, and touched them to the leather jackets. Fire leaped from the costumes, and Daryl grabbed the front of his chariot, waiting for them to start screaming in pain. But they were whisked out of the Remake Center without a sound and into sight of the crowd, and were met by screams and cheers even louder than the ones for District 1.

It was their turn. Carol and Portia ignited his and Rick’s costumes, and Daryl immediately tensed up, still not trusting the fake flames. But there was no heat, just a faint tickling sensation. Carol kissed his cheek before she stepped down. “Head up, Daryl. Smile. They’ll love you.” She dropped away from him, and then they were riding out into the huge promenade for their official presentation to the country.

Chapter Text

Daryl lifted his chin with as much defiance as he could muster, his eyes sweeping over the crowds nervously. In front of him was a long, wide paved road that ended in a huge circle like a giant keyhole. At the opposite end of the circle was a towering, imposing mansion with a balcony where President Snow was standing, his white hair visible in the distance. Proud, massive red banners emblazoned with the Capitol’s seal hung in a row from the very top of the stadium, and the late afternoon sun washed over the cheering citizens and the tributes parading down the boulevard.

He could hear horrified gasps from the crowd when they saw the fire leaping from the costumes, but once they realized the four of them weren’t in any danger, they went wild. People screamed their first names, which they had actually bothered to find in the program, and flowers rained from the stadium, falling in their path and into the chariot. A chant of “District 12! District 12!” was taken up and echoes through the promenade, bouncing off the high, black walls of the mansion and echoing back toward Daryl. The chariot jolted as it bumped along the road, and all of a sudden, Rick had grabbed his hand.

Daryl instinctively pulled away, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room for movement, and Rick’s grip was too tight to easily break away from. He glanced sideways at him in confusion.

“Don’t let go of me. Seriously, I’m going to fall out of this thing,” Rick said, looking a little queasy and as the chariot jerked and shook again, Daryl suddenly felt glad he had someone to hang on to.

They imitated Sophia and Karen in front of them, Daryl a little reluctantly, waving to the crowds and Rick actually blew a few kisses at them once he’d gotten his balance back. There was no way in hell Daryl was going to blow kisses at people who couldn’t wait to watch him die, so he stuck to waving. He caught a glimpse of him and Rick on the huge screens above the crowds, and honestly, they looked pretty damn breathtaking. The flames lit up their faces, making the makeup much more dramatic and attractive, but they were still completely recognizable. A trail of fire seemed to dangle behind the chariot for just a second before fading away.

The ride was short, and the twenty-four chariots reached the end of the promenade, lining up neatly inside a circle of paved road. President Snow waved to the crowd, effectively quieting the noise, and gave the traditional speech that welcomed the forty-eight tributes to the city. Daryl didn’t listen to whatever he was saying, instead watching the huge screens that were cutting around to get a close up on every tribute’s face.

When the shot cut to Sophia, and then to Karen, Daryl realized that both of them had gotten more screen time than anyone from the other districts. The camera then cut to his face, and he was satisfied to see that he still looked confident and reasonably attractive-ish with the makeup and flames flickering around him. Then it cut to Rick, who looked, well, fucking incredible. The two of them got the same amount of screen time as Karen and Sophia.

Daryl was still gripping Rick’s hand as the anthem began to play over the loudspeakers and the chariots pulled forward to file one by one through another wide door that led to the Training Center. He wondered if Rick still had any circulation left in his hand, because he sure as hell didn’t. Not that he particularly minded.

They were met by squeals as the prep teams engulfed them, gabbling out praise so quickly Daryl had no idea what they were trying to say. Carol’s gray hair was visible in the cloud of rainbow, and she gave him a warm smile as he and Rick descended from the chariot. It wasn’t until Daryl noticed that Rick was staring at him that he realized he was still hanging on to his hand. Embarrassed, he let go quickly, and rubbed his hand to get the blood flowing again.

“Thanks for holding on to me,” Rick said quietly, looking up at him sideways from underneath his long lashes. Daryl’s mouth went dry when Rick blinked, how the guy kept his eyelashes from getting all tangled up and shit, Daryl didn’t know, and he dropped his gaze to the floor awkwardly.

“’S all right,” he mumbled, surprised and confused by the sudden warmth rushing through him.

Before either of them could say anything else, Effie had swept dramatically over to them, Sophia and Karen in tow behind her.

“That was perfect!” she gushed, clapping her hands together in excitement. “You two were stunning, it’s a good thing you had such talented stylists! I wasn’t sure how the crowd would react, considering neither of you pay any mind as to how you behave, but everyone seemed to love you anyway!”

Daryl was really beginning to consider acting worse just to piss her off, she was so uptight about everything. But somehow that seemed juvenile, and with Rick’s blue eyes subtly trained on him, the last thing he wanted to be was childish.

Effie then said something about showing them to their rooms, but Daryl wasn’t listening. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d noticed a few of the tributes glaring at the four of them, him and Rick especially, and he felt a little uneasy when he realized most of them were Careers. They didn’t like being outdone in anything, even something as trivial as the opening ceremonies. He locked gazes with the boy with the eye patch from District 1, and for a few seconds, they stared each other down. The boy’s head was tilted slightly, as if he was sizing Daryl up, and his face was impassive. Almost too impassive. His one good eye held steady until Daryl found he had to look away with a shudder. Maybe they’d made a few enemies already.

When everyone began to move away, Daryl followed without thinking, trailing after them beside Rick. “Don’t think we got too many friends,” he muttered to Rick, glancing back over his shoulder. Eye Patch was talking to a few other boys and a couple of girls, and Daryl silently hoped that District 12 hadn’t been made a special target.

He was too distracted to pay attention to where Effie was leading them, but somewhere along the way Carol and Portia had disappeared along with their assistants, leaving him, Rick, Sophia and Karen alone with their escort, and Hershel hadn’t shown up anywhere. Daryl made a mental note to hunt the guy down if he didn’t make an appearance tomorrow.

Effie herded them all into an elevator, at least that’s what Daryl thought it was, and pressed a button labeled 12 near the door. Daryl felt his stomach drop as the thing quietly and smoothly whisked them higher into the Training Center. Effie beamed at them. “Every district has their own floor, to get there you just have to press the button that’s the same number of your district, it’s easy to remember.”

Daryl wasn’t sure how he felt about the tiny cube, he didn’t like enclosed spaces, and even though there was plenty of room in the elevator for personal space, he still felt entirely too close to Sophia and Rick. Effie’s thick perfume filled the small space, and Daryl had to hold his breath to keep from coughing on the strange scent.

The doors opened to a large living room with shiny, light gray walls complete with a curved black leather couch, a huge TV, a purple carpet, and strange decorations scattered about. Wide marble stairs led to a raised area that was only furnished by a long rectangular dining table and weird- looking green chairs. Daryl thought the whole place was all very Effie- ish.

Effie held her arms out theatrically as she led them into the room, squealing happily. “Don’t you just love it? Everything’s been designed especially for the Quarter Quell! Even though you’ll only be living here until the Games start, you get to enjoy everything that’s here.” She led them to a dark gray door on the opposite end of the room. “Right through there are your quarters, your names are on the door. I will be right over there-” she pointed to a second door “-if you need me. Dinner’s at five- thirty, and don’t be late!”

Karen and Sophia filed into the door first, followed by Rick and then Daryl. A long hallway stretched out in front of them, with floor- to –ceiling windows on the opposite end to let in natural daylight. Four doors, two on each side of the hallway, waited for them. Daryl found his name carved into a plaque hanging on the last door on the right. Rick’s door was the last one on the left, so they would be right across from each other.

Daryl’s room was similar to the one he had on the train, except it was bigger and had twice as many control panels set into the wall with hundreds of buttons. He didn’t know if he would even have time to press them all. Still not trusting the Capitol, he did another quick search for cameras or microphones before stripping out of the parade costume and showering. He needed at least one place safe from their prying eyes.

***

Stuffed with lobster, which he’d never had before but was essentially a giant, red crawfish, Daryl was now pressed up against Rick on the fake leather couch, with Sophia on his other side.

How the hell did he manage to get himself in situations like this?

The couch, even though it was pretty damn big, barely fit him, Rick, Sophia, Karen, Carol, Portia, Effie, and Hershel, who’d shown up at dinner looking much better than he usually did. Afterward, Effie had herded them all onto the couch to watch the replay of the parade in order to hear what Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith, the announcers, had commented on. They might be able to use whatever he had said about them to their favor when trying to win sponsors.

At the moment, the two announcers, who looked very strange with their Capitol fashions, were giving some sort of introduction to the parade. Caesar had his hair dyed dark green, and he’d worn makeup on his eyelids and lips to match it, but his sparkly dark blue suit was the same as it had always been. Claudius’s hair was a pale blond color that did not suit his chubby, pink face at all, especially with the way he’d styled it. Parted in the middle, with the two curly bunches raised up on his head, he looked very much like a pig with a wig. Daryl wondered how they actually looked without all their stupid accessories.

“Over one hundred thousand people craning to get a glimpse of this year’s tributes, and the sponsors get to see them for the first time! The importance of this moment cannot be overstated, especially with this year being a Quarter Quell,” Caesar began, his voice full of excitement and drama.

Claudius nodded assent, his curls bouncing repulsively. “That’s right, Caesar, the stylists have been working extra hard to make sure their district makes an impression on the sponsors! With forty- eight tributes here in the Capitol, they’ll need something spectacular to win the crowd’s attention.”

“And here they come!” Caesar and Claudius turned to the screen behind them, where the first chariots were beginning to stream out of the Remake Center. They made a lot of fuss over the costumes and the tributes, chuckling jovially over District 4 in particular when the camera zoomed in on them and gave an up-close shot of the fishing nets draped over the naked tributes and knotted strategically at their groins and chests. One of the girls, a blond, looked extremely unhappy about this choice of costume. Daryl was fervently grateful he wasn’t from District 4.

And then Sophia and Karen’s chariot came onto the promenade, with him and Rick following after a couple of seconds. Caesar suddenly shouted, “Look at that! District 12 is on the runway and I don’t think anyone in the crowd should miss this!”

Daryl already knew that the four of them had attracted a lot of attention, and he’d seen what they’d looked like on the screens while he’d been riding down the promenade, but now he was watching himself the way the citizens had seen him. The way Merle was seeing him right at this very second at home, on their crappy little TV.

The other forty- four tributes certainly were dressed in the best costumes anyone had ever seen, but none of them held a candle to the last two chariots. The erratic movement of the bright orange and yellow flames automatically drew everyone’s attention away from the other tributes. Daryl tried to concentrate on the others to get a look at who he would be facing, but the flickering light immediately brought his attention back to District 12. They’d made an impression all right.

Caesar laughed delightedly. “Look at them waving to the crowd! They’re proud to come from District 12, and they refuse to be overlooked! I love that! They’re fighters, they are!”

There were a few more enthusiastic comments as the chariots lined up in the giant circle, and then President Snow re-gave his speech, and as the tributes disappeared inside the Training Center, Caesar and Claudius looked back at the camera very seriously.

“After that spectacular show, I daresay this year will be the best yet! Everyone will be on the edge of their seats as we wait for the training scores to come out! But until then, we’ll be doing interviews with the stylists, mentors, and escorts to tide us over. Happy Hunger Games everyone, and may the odds be ever in your favor.” Caesar winked at the camera, the Capitol seal flashed onto the screen, and then Carol pressed a button on a small black device and the TV shut off.

Hershel got up from where he was on the couch and moved to sit in front of the tributes on the coffee table made of silver hexagons of differing heights. He leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, and said, “Training starts tomorrow. We need to find out what sort of strategy each of you are going to work on. That being said, I need to know who wants to be coached separately from the other three. You may have a talent you don’t want the others to know about. Otherwise we’re going to discuss everything together.”

Daryl almost opened his mouth to say he wanted to be coached alone, but dropped his gaze to the floor instead. In situations like this, he would almost always make sure to distance himself from anyone else. But honestly, what was the point? Every one of the others knew he hunted illegally, they’d all seen his kills at some point or another. The Capitol wouldn’t be broadcasting their training sessions, so he didn’t need to worry about Merle’s opinion on the matter. And he might miss out on getting a bit of an insight on the other tributes’ skills.

When no one answered him, Hershel nodded and continued talking in his slow manner. “You can change your mind at any time. All right now, Sophia,” he said, turning toward her. “I know you’re young. I know there’s going to be a lot of other tributes out there, and they’re all going to be bigger than you. But you can’t tell me that you don’t have anything you can do that will give you an edge.” He took her tiny hands in his and held them, looking at her kindly.

Daryl could tell how much effort Hershel was putting into this. The guy knew exactly what to say in order to alleviate the little girl’s fears, but it was costing him a shitload of pain to do it. Sophia didn’t have a chance, and Hershel knew it. Daryl didn’t know whether to give Hershel credit for knowing exactly what to say to give her some strength or cuss him out for giving her false hope. No twelve- year- old had won the Games yet. The youngest so far had been a fourteen year old Career tribute called Finnick, but that was mainly due to the fact that he’d gotten a trident as a gift halfway through. Being from the fishing district, the thing had basically been an extension of his arm, and once the other tributes realized he was the one to kill, it was too late.

Sophia bit her lip for a moment, concentrating hard. “I’m small,” she said. “And I’m fast. I’m faster than all the girls in my grade at school. So if they can’t catch me, they can’t kill me?” She ended the last sentence in a question, looking up at Hershel hopefully. Daryl had to turn away from her. That innocent hopefulness was too painful to look at.

“That’s absolutely right. Tomorrow, why don’t you learn some survival skills? Figure out what plants are good to eat. Learn how to stay warm without needing to build a fire. Does that sound like something you can do?”

Sophia nodded, looking more optimistic. Hershel let go of her hands and turned to face Karen.

“How about you?”

Karen’s curt response surprised Daryl. “I know how to use a knife. My dad taught me how. I can throw one too, if someone’s not too far away.” She met Hershel’s gaze briefly, her big brown doe eyes filled with vague sadness.

“Good. Keep practicing with them, but don’t let the other tributes see how good you are with one. Save that for your private session.” Karen nodded, her gaze on the floor.

“Daryl, I’ve seen you in the Hob enough to know you’re a fine hunter. Do you have a bow at home that you use to hunt with?”

Daryl didn’t answer right away. He didn’t want to confess that he had a crossbow, a weapon so obviously illegal that he was worried someone might overhear and report it, causing Merle or his father to either get thrown in jail or executed. The latter being more likely.

He decided to lie, using the exact same one Merle had told him. “I got a crossbow. Been in the family a long time.”

If he knew Daryl was lying, Hershel didn’t give it away. He simply contemplated Daryl’s words for a minute.

“They don’t always have bows in the arena, and I’ve never seen a crossbow, except in training once or twice. I might be able to pull some strings, see if I can’t get a crossbow available for your private session. Best not to use one in front of everyone else, though. Rick?”

Rick tilted his head as if he were cracking his neck and gave Hershel a wry smile. “I got nothing. Except maybe boring everyone else to death with explanations on how supply and demand works.”

“I don’t accept that,” their mentor said firmly. “You’re eighteen, you’ve got a good build, and most importantly, you volunteered for your younger brother. I know for a fact that there are sponsors already asking questions about you. You don’t have one thing you can use in that arena?”

Fuck. Rick already had sponsors asking about him. Daryl had figured that would happen, but at Hershel’s words, he felt a little stab of frustration. He wasn’t on the same level as Rick, and he had no idea how to get there. There was no way he would survive without gifts from sponsors. Daryl looked up at Rick angrily from underneath his eyelashes.

“No. Nothing like what Daryl can do. It doesn’t matter that I volunteered for Carl, as soon as everyone finds out how good he is with a crossbow, they’ll be lining up to give him stuff,” Rick said, fighting to keep his voice neutral.

Daryl snapped his head up to stare at Rick. What the hell? Since when did Rick give any thought to his skill with a crossbow? It wasn’t exactly a secret, but the fact that he even noticed was weird. And okay, maybe it was a little nice, knowing that he’d paid attention. But still, what was the guy doing?

“Oh yeah? What about you? I seen you kickin’ the asses of guys bigger than you for years at the wrestlin’ competition at school,” Daryl snapped at Rick, seething, but surprised by his own outburst. “And ain’t you the one doin’ all the heavy lifting when one of your daddy’s shipments comes in? It ain’t Carl picking up those hundred pound bags of flour at the market.”

Forget about Rick, what the hell was he doing?

“It’s not the same as knowing how to use a weapon. I don’t know how to hunt like you can,” Rick said, looking affronted.

Hershel interrupted them. “Rick, don’t underestimate how important physical strength can be. I understand that won’t help you in terms of food, but you will be able to learn how to set up snares and identify edible plants starting tomorrow.”

Rick stared at the floor, an unreadable expression on his face. Daryl felt a stupid urge to take his hand and try to comfort him.

No one said anything for several moments. Hershel sighed and stood up. “All right, that settles it. Everyone learn something new tomorrow. Don’t ignore the survival stations. None of us have any idea what will be in that arena. You never know what will come in handy. Now, go on and get some sleep. Meet Effie at the elevator at ten.” He left and disappeared up the stairs.

Sophia, who had been trying to stifle her yawns for the past ten minutes, hopped up from the couch and headed toward for the door. Karen followed her, carefully avoiding looking at anyone else.

Daryl decided to make things perfectly clear between him and Rick. “I don’t need your help,” he said to the other boy. “I’m better on my own.”

“I don’t exactly recall you making a case for yourself,” Rick shot back, his blue eyes blazing.

“I wasn’t the one ignoring everything I’d done back in District 12. Why don’t you actually stick up for yourself next time and save me the trouble?” Daryl shoved himself off the couch and made to leave the room. He could feel Rick’s eyes burning into his back as he stormed out.

Daryl slammed the door to his room. The effect Rick had on him was unnerving. First he’d underrated himself, saying he didn’t have any skills that would help him in the arena, which was a fucking lie. And then he’d tried to play Daryl up, which was just weird. And then for whatever reason, Daryl had felt like Hershel needed to know exactly what Rick could do, if the idiot wouldn’t tell him himself. He had no idea why he’d blurted out the stuff about the wrestling and the flour.

Maybe it was a good idea to stay away from Rick. Daryl needed to focus on surviving. That’s what he’d done ever since he could remember, he lived and breathed it. He didn’t need some blue-eyed, humble-to-the-point-where-he-was-going-to-get-himself-killed merchant’s son getting in his head.

As he yanked his pants and shirt off to get ready to go to bed, Daryl bitterly resolved to fend for himself, starting tomorrow. If Rick fucking Grimes wanted to wallow in self- pity and do nothing to prepare for the Games, all the power to him. One less tribute to worry about.

The only problem was, Daryl didn’t know if he could let Rick do that to himself.

Chapter Text

“In a few weeks, forty- seven of you will be dead and one of you will be alive. Who that is depends on how well you pay attention over the next two days. Each station represents one particular skill, and the experts in those skills will remain at the stations for all three days. You are free to travel to any station you wish per your mentor’s instructions. There will be absolutely no fighting or engaging in combative exercises with the other tributes. There are assistants on hand if you want to practice with a partner. The stations are-” the head trainer raised a hand to point at each station and name it before she released the rather intimidating group of forty- eight to disperse amongst them. Daryl stood still for a moment, head ducked slightly, gauging where everyone else was going before quietly shuffling to one that was being avoided.

The actual Training Center was an impressively huge oval- shaped underground gymnasium with cold gray walls, no windows and lit only by lights set into the walls and hanging from the ceiling. The stations were basically alcoves set in regular intervals in the walls, but the throwing and shooting ranges were at one end of the gym and the obstacle courses at the other end. From what he had gleaned from Effie’s chattering earlier that morning, they had two full days in the Training Center to pick up new skills and practice with weapons.

The chamber began to hum with lulled conversation and soon, the clank of metal on metal and the dull thud of metal on target began to echo through it as well. Occasionally, a couple of tributes would start yelling angrily at each other, but the many assistants broke it up before it came to blows. Daryl dropped into a crouch at the station he had ended up at, which had a small plot of scruffy grass, various sized sticks and coils of thin wire and twine.

“Ah! Hello there! You made a good choice, not everyone is smart enough to realize that food tends to be more important than your fellow adversaries. What do you know about snares?” The trainer was grinning widely at him, flashing gold teeth.

Daryl stared at him for a moment, annoyed by the Capitol accent lacing his obnoxious friendliness, and then muttered something about knowing a few basic ones. Merle had always been the snare genius, but Daryl showed the trainer one he was well practiced with anyway. As his fingers slowly and deliberately manipulated the wire into the familiar knots, he watched the rest of the tributes. With every single one of them gathered in one room, this would be the time to start learning as much as he could about who he would be facing.

He focused on the Careers in particular. Eye Patch Kid had already developed early alliances with several of them, judging by the group he had with him. Daryl counted a total of eight of them, including Eye Patch. He recognized the blond girl from District 4 who had been unhappy about her parade costume, a dark- skinned girl from District 2 who was wielding a katana with practiced ease, and one of the boys who had a slightly crazed look in his eyes and muscles bulging out of the sleeves of his shirt caught his eye. The boy noticed Daryl staring at them and sneered at him with distaste before flexing his muscles threateningly.

Daryl tore his gaze away from them, feeling nervous. Every single one of them knew exactly what they were doing when it came to fighting, and all of the boys were bigger than him. If they managed to get ahold of him, he was dead. He doubted a knife would make much of a difference, and his crossbow would be of no use against eight of them once they got too close. If there even was a crossbow. He sucked in a shaky breath, trying to steady his nerves, fully aware that the snare expert was watching him. He couldn’t let himself be overwhelmed this early. He had a chance if he managed to survive the initial bloodbath that always began the Games. But that was a pretty damn big “if”.

He let his eyes wander toward the rest of the tributes. Many of them were having their first shaky lessons with a weapon, and others were lifting weights in the middle of the huge room, showing off. Only a few were scattered amongst the survival stations like he was. He noticed Sophia bent over a table covered with containers of differently colored paint, holding a paintbrush and dabbing at her hand with it. Karen was in the middle of an obstacle course, hauling herself up and over a wall with hand and footholds set into it. Daryl watched her with interest and a bit of apprehension. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been at District 12, or maybe she was and he hadn’t noticed it until now. Remembering her comment about knowing something about throwing knives, Daryl made a note to watch out for her. She might turn out to be a fierce competitor.

Rick, however, was holding a spear in the middle of a throwing range, watching an assistant demonstrate the proper way to throw it. As Daryl watched, Rick hefted the spear over his shoulder, took aim, and launched it at a human silhouette. He missed the body and hit the space in between the outline and the edge of the target, but the assistant was nodding to him in approval.

It wasn’t exactly where Daryl expected to see him, but at least he wasn’t continuing to be the dumbass he was last night and completely casting himself out of the running. The assistant had moved behind Rick, her hands on his hips, showing him how to twist them.

Daryl ground his teeth and wrenched his gaze away from them, anger and something else he couldn’t identify coursing through him. Stupid fucking assistant. She’d probably been dying to get her hands on him. How sick. The guy was going to be tossed into the arena in about four days to fight for his life, and she was over there feeling him up.

The trainer’s voice shook Daryl out of his thoughts, praising his work. Daryl hadn’t even realized he’d finished the snare. He watched the expert show him a useful trap that would leave a human competitor dangling by a leg from a tree, and Daryl quickly mimicked the way he’d twisted the wire. He stayed at the snare station for a while longer, determinedly keeping himself from looking over at Rick again, before quietly moving on to a different station, picking an empty alcove at random.

It turned out to be the edible plant station. Daryl recognized nearly all of the plant samples that were spread out on the three rectangular tables that formed three sides of a square, but a few unfamiliar ones caught his eye. He dutifully picked up one of the strange plants and examined it. He didn’t know which ones would turn up in the arena, so he might as well commit the unfamiliar plants to memory.

Daryl was halfway through poring over the samples he was unaccustomed with when a small voice alight with curiosity practically made him fall out of the chair he was sitting in.

“What’s that one?”

Cursing himself for losing track of his surroundings, Daryl glared at the little girl who had managed to sneak up on him.

“Why don’t you ask him?” he growled at Sophia, gesturing at the trainer, even though he was currently occupied with someone else who had shown up a few minutes earlier. The new person had kept their distance from Daryl, so he hadn’t felt the need to leave.

“He’s busy. You probably know more than him anyway. Please, Daryl?” Sophia looked up at him pleadingly.

Daryl sighed. He’d always been a sucker for kids. He’d teach her how to identify the edible ones that were easiest to recognize, and then he’d leave as soon as he could. “Fine. Go get yourself a chair. I’m only gonna teach you a few, you got it? I don’t got a whole lot of time to waste.”

Sophia’s face broke into a grin and she dragged over a stool and climbed up on it. “Okay! What’s the one that you were just holding?”

“We ain’t gonna start there,” Daryl said promptly, and then realized he had no idea where he actually wanted to start. He glanced at the various samples on the table, trying to figure out how best to go about teaching them Sophia, and then decided just to wing it.

“All right, um, go look at all the tables and pick out the ones that you recognize. Those will be the easiest ones to remember, see, cuz you already know what they are.”

Sophia hopped down from her stool and walked along the tables, biting her lip in concentration. Daryl noticed that there was still paint on her hands and arms, the colors forming a vague pattern that seemed familiar. She must have been at the camouflage station earlier. Sophia picked out several flowers, a few branches with berries hanging off of them, and a couple of other plants, pretty much all of the samples Daryl figured she would grab. Dandelion, daylily, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, burdock. Common stuff that everyone from District 12 would recognize.

“These are all edible?” She asked after she’d set them down carefully on the table they were sitting at.

“Yeah, but you gotta know which parts you can eat and how to cook them,” Daryl said. “With burdock, you can’t eat the little bristly things, but if you dig up the roots, they’re good once you strip off that outer layer and boil them.”

“Burdock roots,” Sophia repeated. “Good after they’re boiled.”

“Right. Now see the dandelion there? You can eat pretty much anything on it…”

Daryl went over nearly twenty or thirty different plants with Sophia, patiently explaining what parts were edible and whether they had to be cooked or if they could be eaten raw. After a while, he found himself actually enjoying the task. Sitting with Sophia and helping her didn’t make him feel awkward or guilty like he’d expected it to. The trainer even left them alone, just watching them and listening to Daryl talk with an odd half- smile on his face. It wasn’t until the head trainer blew a whistle to signal their lunch hour that Daryl realized he’d been sitting there for almost two hours.

He jumped up from his chair, suddenly self- conscious and frustrated with himself. He shouldn’t have been teaching a twelve- year- old how to recognize edible plants, he should have been focusing on what he needed to do. He’d just lost two hours that could have been spent at other stations, learning things that could save his life.

Sophia was helping the trainer put the samples back in their original places on the tables, and she beamed up at Daryl, her arms full of leaves. “Thanks, Daryl. You’re a really good teacher.”

God, he’d been such a fucking dumbass. “Yeah, whatever kid,” he mumbled, pissed off at himself and trying not to wince at the hurt expression that crossed Sophia’s face. He turned away from her and strode off toward the rest of the tributes who were filing through a door into what he figured was a cafeteria.

Lunch was… interesting, to say the least, for Daryl. Hyperaware of the fact that Rick, Sophia, and Karen were all sitting at a table together and unwilling to join them since he’d rarely been friendly, he sat by himself in a corner and conscientiously ignored any and all gazes that were directed his way. He fumed silently, stabbing his salt potatoes viciously as he tried to figure out just what the fuck was going on inside his head.

He had no idea why in the world he’d helped Sophia by teaching her about the plants. Come to think of it, he had no idea why he’d tried to help Rick yesterday by making sure the other boy wasn’t casting himself out of the running. That wasn’t what he’d been taught to do all his life, it did nothing to benefit him. Just the opposite, actually. He needed to let the others deal with their problems on their own without getting himself into it. He could almost hear Merle sneering at him.

“The fuck are you doin’, helpin’ these pussy- ass lowlife bitches? You got a thing for little girls now? Why don’t you just leave them the fuck alone and focus on what you need to do, little brother. You’re lucky you got ol’ Merle here to look after yer worthless ass. Ain’t nobody gonna care about you ‘cept me, and ain’t nobody ever will.”

Daryl mused unhappily over that thought. It was true that Merle had been the only person who’d ever wanted him around, except for maybe Madge. But Daryl felt like there was some sort of kinship between him and the other three tributes, seeing as how they were all heading for slaughter together. He honestly did not want to see any of them die, Rick and Sophia especially, in the arena. Neither of them had ever looked at Daryl like he was the scum of the earth, something he was far too used to being on the receiving end of, even when he’d been shouting at someone or acting sullen and hostile. Did that mean something? Or was he just deluding himself into thinking he had a little bit of a bond with them?

Confused by his own train of thought, he let himself succumb to a moment of weakness and glance up at where the three of them seated, eating their lunches together companionably, like there wasn’t a fourth person missing. Daryl felt his chest contract, and suddenly tears were threatening to make an appearance for the third time in less than three days. He wrenched his gaze away from them and stared down at his tray, his hand gripping his fork so hard his knuckles turned white. He fought to keep the waterworks back, there was no way he could be seen crying in the middle of every single other tribute, tears were a sign of weakness. A sign of an easy target. Not to mention that he absolutely hated crying.

He shouldn’t have been so surprised. They knew exactly the kind of trash the Dixon family was, and it wasn’t hard to understand why they didn’t want to hang around him. Daryl knew he never should have fallen out of his self- preservative way of living. Two generous acts and suddenly he was the district idiot, letting the others get into his head and use him. That was not the way he was supposed to be going about things.

Daryl stabbed the next potato so hard his fork left a dent in the bottom of the tray. Who gave a shit if the other three didn’t want him around? He’d spent his whole life unwanted, why would a change of cast and scenery make things any different? He really needed to get a grip on himself.

Feeling more hurt, confused, and frustrated than he cared to admit, Daryl resolved not to say another word to the other District 12 tributes. He forced down the rest of his food, his appetite gone, and mentally prepared himself to stick to that resolution. Even if it meant never talking to Rick again.

For whatever reason, that thought was more upsetting than the potential lack of a crossbow in the arena. Daryl let his fork fall onto his tray with a clatter, suddenly feeling sick. Their conversations had never been exactly enjoyable, but Rick had been the first one to talk about something Daryl had done in an admiring kind of way. He’d paid attention. Grabbed his hand in the chariot. It was almost strange to think that they would never become friends.

But of course Rick had to catch his eye on the way out of the cafeteria and send all thoughts of never talking to him again zooming out of Daryl’s head. The rush of warmth enveloped him the same way it did on the train. This time, however, Rick was looking at him with what was maybe admiration, pity, confusion, or wonder, or all four of them at once. Or none of them at all.

Daryl stumbled for a second, taken aback by the utterly bizarre ways Rick made him react just by fucking looking at him, before remembering his resolution and raising an arm to flip him the bird. Instead of looking embarrassed or horror- struck, Rick actually smiled and shook his head before getting lost in the crowd.

Daryl had no choice but to follow the rest of the tributes back into the Training Center, annoyed and confused to no end.

***

Daryl spent the next two days keeping to himself as much as possible, both in and out of training. He could tell the other three were avoiding him, which was perfectly fine with him since it helped him stick to his decision. Occasionally, he caught Rick staring at him from a distance, his clear blue eyes locked on whatever he was doing at the moment. Ordinarily, Daryl would have just gone up to Rick and asked him what his fucking problem was, but he didn’t want to break his resolution by talking to him. So he retreated into the antisocial shell he knew so well and stayed there.

The two days of training had given Daryl enough time to polish up his survival skills and practice with weapons he considered secondary to a crossbow, like knives and spears. He’d gotten pretty good at throwing knives, enough to earn mutinous looks from the Career pack, and felt reasonably prepared for the arena as long as there was a crossbow available. If there wasn’t, he was dead meat.

On the third day, a Capitol servant arrived at breakfast and delivered a piece of paper to Hershel. The four tributes watched apprehensively as their white- haired mentor gave it a once- over.

“It looks like we’ll be doing things a little bit differently this year. Normally, all of the tributes go down to the Training Center at the same time for their private sessions, since the Gamemakers only need six hours to get through all of them. However, since there’s forty- eight of you this year, and the sessions will take a full twelve hours, you’ll be going down by district number. District 12 is scheduled for eight p.m., so I would suggest getting there at least fifteen minutes early. They’ll wait until tomorrow afternoon to announce your scores.”

Daryl nodded. So he had most of the day free to do whatever he wanted. Other than dissolve into a nervous wreck over the upcoming session. He envied District 1, who would have their sessions over with by 10 a.m. But then, they would have all day to worry about their scores.

The private sessions were always held the day after training had finished. Each tribute was given fifteen minutes alone with the Gamemakers to show off whatever particular skill they were exceptionally good at, and then they were awarded a score anywhere from 1 to 12, with one being irredeemably bad and twelve being unattainably high. The scores were televised, but the actual training sessions were not in order to keep a tribute’s skill secret from the others. The scores gave the Capitol citizens an idea of who had the best chance of winning, and they gave other tributes an idea of who would be the most dangerous in the arena.

Hershel went on. “I hope you all have an idea of what you’re going to show the Gamemakers. If you don’t, we can talk it over and try to figure something out.”

Karen muttered “knives” under her breath, and then promptly left the table. Rick looked slightly embarrassed as he said, “I’ll just throw some weights around. I got pretty good with the spears in the Training Center, but I don’t think that’s what I’m going to do.”

“I won’t pressure you one way or another. If you feel that weights is your best shot, then by all means go for it.”

After Rick left the table, Hershel turned to Daryl, a knowing look in his eye.

“Daryl, I dropped some obvious hints about you needing a crossbow for your session. I can’t guarantee that there will be one available, but I did my best. No use worrying about it. Do you have a backup plan in case there isn’t one?”

Daryl thought for a second. If there wasn’t a crossbow, he might as well throw some knives or make a few basic snares.

“Yeah,” he said, hoping that answer was good enough for Hershel. He’d make something up if he had to.

Hershel seemed placated by the one word answer. “Good.”

Daryl left the table and headed toward his room, preparing himself for a long and possibly boring day. First thing on the agenda was a fucking nap. He stripped off his shirt and pants and climbed back into his bed, which was as unmade as it could be. He burrowed underneath the blankets, forming a little cocoon, enjoying the opportunity to simply relax shut out the world for a while. He didn’t get many chances like that, and this might be one of his last.

He drifted off to sleep fervently hoping that there would be a goddamn crossbow in the Training Center.

Daryl was the last one to meet Effie near the elevator, which was exactly what he’d been hoping for. No opportunity for small talk. The nervousness and tension radiating off all four tributes seemed thick enough to cut with a knife as the elevator whisked them down to the Training Center. Daryl was standing entirely too close to Rick, if he listened hard enough, he felt like he could almost make out the other’s boy’s heartbeat. He imagined it would be very quick at the moment, but still strong and steady.

Not that he was remotely interested in listening to Rick’s heartbeat. Not at all.

When they stepped out of the elevator, they met a lone boy bearing the number 11 on his sleeve sitting on the bench just outside the door that led into the huge gymnasium. The boy ignored them, staring down at the floor instead as they all sat on benches a good distance away from him.

Effie was the only one who wasn’t sitting, she trailed from Rick to Sophia to Daryl to Karen and back again, trying to assure them that they had nothing to worry about and asking if they wanted anything to drink before they were called in. Daryl tuned her out as best he could, as was his habit, but otherwise put up with her fussing. Annoying as she was, she meant well.

The boy from District 11 was called in. By then, Daryl was so amped up that he missed what the kid’s name had been. He figured he would find out sooner or later.

Fifteen minutes went by, and then Karen’s name was called. She stood up, her hands shaking slightly, before squaring her shoulders and walking into the gymnasium. Daryl’s leg began twitching of its own accord, his knee bouncing up and down spastically.

He strained to hear something, anything that would give him an idea of what was happening in the Training Center. Karen was likely throwing her knives by now, but the door remained resolutely soundproof and gave no evidence as to when the blades were hitting their targets.

“Sophia Peletier.” The computerized female voice was irritatingly calm. As the youngest tribute disappeared through the door, Daryl stood up and began to pace, still trying not to glance at Rick the entire time. He was used to sitting still for long periods of time, but he’d never been nervous like this before. He needed to burn off some of the restless energy. As he paced, he wondered pointlessly what Sophia was doing. Plants? The camouflage? He hoped that whatever it was, she did it well enough to impress the Gamemakers at least a little bit.

“Rick Grimes.”

Without meaning to, Daryl snapped his attention toward Rick and blatantly stared as the other boy slowly stood up from his bench. Instead of going into the Training Center right away, Rick met Daryl’s gaze, and they stood like that for just a brief second.

“Don’t hold anythin’ back.” The words tumbled out of Daryl’s mouth without permission. Why, oh, why did he have to say anything? It was like he’d never heard of a resolution before.

“I won’t. You… shoot straight.” Rick didn’t break eye contact for another second or two, as if he were unwilling to look away from Daryl. An unexpected urge to stride over and hug Rick until his ribs cracked overwhelmed Daryl, but before he could call himself an idiot, Rick was turning away from him and disappearing through the door.

It was the longest fifteen minutes of Daryl’s life. He continued to pace, feeling more and more wound up by the second. He glanced at the door repeatedly, wondering how Rick was doing, if the Gamemakers were impressed or not.

That was a stupid question. Of course they were fucking impressed, the guy had volunteered for his younger brother, he had some skill with weapons now that he’d had some training, and he was ridiculously strong. He should really be worrying about himself, come to think of it. If there wasn’t a crossbow, he only had a couple of meager backup plans.

“Daryl Dixon.”

The calm voice made him jump. He wiped his sweaty palms on his shirt, took a deep breath, and opened the door to the gymnasium.

The Training Center was laid out exactly as it had been during the two days of training, and Daryl immediately began looking for a crossbow-shaped object, his heart pounding. But before he’d walked more than three strides into the gym, he knew he was in trouble. The Gamemakers were located in a small room set into the wall of the Training Center, roughly ten feet above the ground. They were all dressed in varying degrees of ridiculous Capitol fashions, but the one thing they all had in common was the look of boredom on their faces. They’d been in the room for too long, sitting through forty- seven other demonstrations without break, and most of them had had too much wine. It was clear that all they wanted was to go home.

Daryl had no choice but to find his crossbow as quickly as possible. He headed for the rack of bows, hoping, just hoping that they had given him a chance.

And there it was, a beautiful black thing not unlike the one he had at home. He picked it up, relishing its weight, and grabbed the few bolts that had been included with it. He could feel the atmosphere coming from the Gamemakers’ room egging him on, their obvious boredom and impatience pushing him to finish his session as quickly as possible. Daryl set his jaw. They would see what he had to show them. He was risking his life all in the name of their entertainment.

He loaded a bolt, but as soon as he raised it to aim at one of the target dummies, he knew something was off. The Capitol crossbow hadn’t been made the same as his old one, it didn’t sit right. He pulled the trigger, and the bolt missed the dummy by a couple of inches and clattered along the floor behind it.

Daryl lowered the crossbow in disbelief and humiliation. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d missed what he’d been shooting at. He could hear the Gamemakers laughing from their perch, and he knew he’d lost what little attention he had.

Pissed, Daryl loaded another bolt and shot again and again until he’d gotten the feel for the new crossbow. Suddenly feeling brave, he grabbed a couple of knives and attached them to his belt. He returned to the middle of the Training Center and took his position. He raised up the crossbow, pulled the trigger, and severed the rope holding the sandbag used for boxing. The bag split open when it hit the ground, spilling sand all over the floor. Dropping the crossbow, he whipped out both of the knives and threw one at a dummy, impaling it through the chest. Daryl turned around and aimed at another dummy, this time sinking the blade into an eye socket.

Satisfied, he turned to look up at the Gamemakers. Three of them were nodding approval, but the rest of them had their attention fixed on a roast pig that had arrived at their banquet table just after the beginning of his session.

“Hey! Who ordered this pig here?” One of them was laughing.

Incredulous, Daryl stared at them. His life was on the line, and he was being upstaged by a dead pig. They didn’t have the decency to pay attention. It didn’t matter that there had been forty- seven others before him. That wasn’t his fault. They were getting fucking paid to watch him shoot things.

Rage boiled inside of him, making his hands shake and his face burn. He grabbed the crossbow from where it was laying on the ground and loaded the last bolt. The Gamemakers shrieked with fear as he aimed right into their midst. They scrambled away from the table as he released the bolt, which skewered the apple right out of the pig’s mouth and pinned it to the wall.

The Gamemakers stared at him, horror and disbelief etched into their ugly, warped faces.

“I know this is just a fuckin’ game to you,” Daryl spit at them angrily, “but I’m riskin’ my life for your goddamn entertainment. Least you can do is pay attention.”

He flung the crossbow away from him and turned his back on them, leaving the gymnasium without a dismissal or a second backward glance.

Chapter Text

Automatically sinking into his tough- guy façade, Daryl strode into the elevator and viciously punched the button labeled 12 with the side of his fist. Seething, he let the elevator rocket him up to District 12’s floor, trying to control the shaking in his hands.

God fucking damn it. He’d ruined everything. By some great stroke of good luck, there’d been a crossbow available for him, and then he’d gone and fucking shot a bolt at the Gamemakers. His father was right. Not only was he a useless fuck- up, he’d been an idiot to think any differently.

When the elevator doors slid open, he stormed out into the living room, where Hershel, Effie, and Carol were waiting for him on the black leather couch. When they stood up, curious, hopeful expressions on their faces, he all but broke into a run, not wanting to hear them ask how it went.

“Daryl!” Effie exclaimed as he brushed past them brusquely, her pink- clawed hands reaching out to grasp his arm.

“Fuckin’ leave me be!” He snarled, smacking her hand away and bolting down the hall and into his room. He slammed the door and locked it before they tried to catch up with him. He threw himself onto the bed, burying his face in a pillow and fisting the silk sheets, trying not to panic.

There was a knock on his door. “Daryl, son, let us in. I’m sure whatever happened wasn’t as bad as you think.” Hershel’s voice, calm and soothing, only infuriated Daryl more. Shooting a crossbow bolt at the Gamemakers was exactly as bad as it sounded.

“I don’t wanna hear it!” Daryl shouted, and eventually, after more shouting and several particularly foul bouts of cursing, they did.

Daryl was damn sure the Gamemakers wouldn’t let him get away with what he’d done, even though he hadn’t actually been aiming for any of them. If he had, they’d have a fucking bolt sticking out of their eye! He had no idea what the Capitol would do to him. Would they send Peacekeepers to come to his room in the middle of the night and arrest him? Execute him, or worse, let him continue on all the way into the Games before trapping him somewhere and letting him die a slow, painful death?

It didn’t matter what happened to him anyway. It wasn’t like he’d had a prayer of winning the Games, not with forty- seven other tributes. He’d been delusional to believe otherwise. So he pushed himself up into a sitting position on the bed and stared defiantly at the door, waiting for guards to come and take him away. If they were coming for him, there was no way in hell he was going to be a pussy about it.

The minutes ticked by, and there was no sign of any Peacekeepers. What the hell were they waiting for? They knew exactly where he was, the Gamemakers had seen him get onto the elevator for Christ’s sakes. It wasn’t like he was going to try and sneak out of the building, that was impossible, what with all the Capitol servants around.

And then it hit him. There weren’t any Peacekeepers coming for him because the Capitol wasn’t going to arrest or kill him. If they did, they’d have to find another boy to replace him in their stupid Hunger Games. They had no other choice but to do something else to him.

Fear for his family crept into Daryl’s heart. He couldn’t care less about what happened to his father, but seeing as Merle was the only one who’d ever given a shit about him, Daryl couldn’t help but feel apprehensive for his brother. Were they going to take it out on Merle instead of him? Kill him, or take away his belongings and force him to live on the street?

A sudden image of Merle standing next to a makeshift tent, hollering obscenities and pissing on the wall of the Justice Building popped into Daryl’s head, and he snorted with amusement, despite the miserable situation. Good old fuckin’ Merle would take an eviction as a personal invitation to set up camp on the Capitol’s front porch.

Daryl laid back down on the bed, unhappier than ever. He fervently hoped the Gamemakers decided to devise a brutal death for him in the arena instead of punishing Merle. He could handle anything they threw at him, pain was nothing new. But the thought of his brother paying for what he’d done made him sick.

The night passed slowly. Daryl sank in and out of sleep, tossing and turning on the bed as faceless men haunted his dreams, condemning everyone he cared for to death. By the time the sun peeked over the horizon and golden light shone through his window, he was soaked in sweat and tangled in the sheets.

Daryl extricated himself from the bed and promptly took a shower, trying to wash the nightmares away and mentally prepare himself for the day. He needed to get his shit together. The scores were going to be announced at noon, and the interviews were going to start at 6:30. And then tomorrow morning, he would be thrown into the arena to fight for his life against forty- seven other tributes.

Oh, how exciting.

Every eye was on him when he stepped into the living room, most of them curious and wary. Daryl screwed up his face into a scowl and strode past everyone else into the small dining area. The table was still laden with food, and Daryl scooped some onto a plate and plunked himself into a chair to eat. Even cold, the food was still some of the best he’d ever tasted.

After a few minutes, he heard heavy footsteps coming toward him and looked up to see Hershel sitting in the chair next to him. The white- haired mentor gazed at him impassively for a moment before speaking. “Daryl, what happened last night?”

Daryl pursed his lips. He really didn’t want to tell the old guy how badly he’d terrified the Gamemakers, but maybe it would be a good thing for someone to know what had really happened in case the Capitol decided to make up an exaggerated story or something.

“I got pissed. Shot a bolt at the Gamemakers. Shot the apple out of their damn pig’s mouth. I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt any of them though,” he said defensively before Hershel asked why he’d attacked them. “They just weren’t payin’ attention is all.”

Hershel nodded slowly, his blue eyes never leaving Daryl’s. Uncomfortable, Daryl fidgeted in his seat. “They gonna arrest me?” He needed someone else to confirm it.

“No, I don’t think so,” Hershel said thoughtfully in his slow manner. “It would take too much effort to replace you now.”

"What about Merle? They gonna do anythin’ to him?” Daryl’s voice dropped an octave and grew huskier as he dared to hope for the life of his asshole brother.

Hershel shook his head. “In order to do that, they would have to explain what had happened in the Training Center, and people aren’t supposed to know about your private sessions. They’ll more likely make your life very difficult in the arena instead.”

Daryl shrugged, relieved beyond belief that nothing other than what he’d already expected was going to happen. “Knew that was coming anyway.”

Hershel nodded, and then cracked a smile. “If I may ask, what exactly did they say after you shot at them?”

“Uh, they didn’t say anythin’. I left before they had a chance,” Daryl said, ducking his head in embarrassment.

Hershel seemed amused, his blue eyes twinkling merrily. “Did you say anything before you left?”

“Yeah. Somethin’ like ‘this ain’t a game, my life’s at stake, least you can do is pay attention.’”

To Daryl’s disbelief, Hershel actually started laughing, a hearty, wheezy chuckle that made the old man’s entire body shake. “Daryl, I think you’re exactly what the Gamemakers are looking for. Come on. They’ll be announcing the scores soon.”

Daryl followed Hershel back into the living room, pondering his statement. Surely kids who shot bolts at them couldn’t be what the Gamemakers were looking for. Just anyone who was willing to hack at other kids for entertainment.

He took a steadying breath and joined the others on the black leather couch. The only spot left had been right in between Carol and Rick, and Daryl immediately noticed the subtle, but distinct smell of honeysuckle coming from Rick.

Considering that honeysuckle was one of his favorite flowers, it was extremely distracting. Daryl leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, trying to cover the growing bulge in his pants.

Embarrassed, he focused his attention as best he could on the huge screen, where Caesar was talking intently to the camera, saying something about careful evaluation and exceptional tributes or whatnot. And then he was reading off the scores.

“From District 1, Sasha, with a score of eight.” Behind Caesar, Sasha’s portrait flashed on the screen, followed by the number eight. Caesar continued on in that manner, and Daryl tried to keep track of tributes who had gotten good scores, becoming increasingly nerve-wracked as tribute after tribute went by.

Like every other year, the rest of the Career tributes received scores within the eight to ten range, with Eye Patch Kid and the dark- skinned girl who’d had the katana each pulling off a ten. District 12 was last, as usual. The tension in the room was palpable. Daryl felt Carol take his hand in hers, and instead of pulling away, he let himself be comforted by her presence.

Karen’s picture came up first, followed by a score of seven. There were several squeals of pride from Effie and the prep teams.

“We can work with that,” Effie said encouragingly to Karen, squeezing her hand.

Sophia’s picture came next, and then the number five flashed. Sophia gave a tiny “Oh!” and then actually smiled. She turned to face the others, a small smile on her face. “That was better than I thought.”

Before anyone could congratulate her, Rick’s picture was on the screen and a score of eight elicited another round of squealing from Effie and the prep teams.

Daryl’s mouth was dry. He was happy for Rick for his good score, he had a solid chance of getting a sponsor or two from that, but now his own fate was going to be decided. Without a good score, he wouldn’t get any sponsors, and his chances of survival dwindled into the tenths of a percent. If not zero.

“And finally, Daryl Dixon,” Caesar said dramatically, and the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile as he paused for a suspenseful second, “with a score of eleven.”

Eleven!

Holy fucking shit.

Daryl stared numbly at the TV screen, which was playing the Capitol anthem. Carol’s hand squeezed his, and he dimly registered Hershel started chuckling jovially. “They must have liked your guts.”

Daryl heard the rest of the room cheering, even Sophia and Karen were smiling at him, and… and Rick.

He and Rick looked at each other for a moment. “Nice job,” Rick said, giving Daryl a very small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Daryl wanted nothing more than to throw his arms around the other boy and hug the living daylights out of him. They stared at each other for a fleeting moment, blue eyes into blue eyes, before Daryl dropped his gaze, feeling his cheeks heat up and redden, becoming much too aware of the smell of honeysuckle. He didn’t understand how Rick always managed to have this effect on him.

And he really didn’t understand why he liked it so much.

Effie was clapping in excitement. “All right boys and girls, it’s time to start preparing for your interviews! We only have four hours to get you prepared before you go to your stylists! Daryl and Rick, you’ll be with me first, Sophia and Karen, you’ll be with Hershel.”

How he managed to survive the next four hours, Daryl didn’t know. Two hours with Effie, distracted by the way Rick kept glancing at him from underneath those long, dark eyelashes, learning how to walk properly and sit like a gentleman and make eye contact with total strangers who couldn’t wait to watch him die, and oh yes, smiling. Daryl finally snapped when it came to the smiling part, cussing the poor woman out and telling her in no uncertain terms that there was no way he was going to be grinning like a lunatic up on that damn stage.

The two hours with Hershel were no better, the old mentor had given Daryl and Rick mock interviews to give them a sense of what might be asked when they were on stage. All of the questions were entirely too personal, and did nothing to soothe Daryl’s nerves. The last thing he wanted to do was spill his guts to a crowd of Capitol citizens.

It was a relief when he was finally turned over to Carol and his prep team. Octavia, Venia, and Flavius kept up a steady stream of gossip, and Daryl found he barely had to answer them to keep their jabbering going. Throughout the entire hour, Carol’s reassuring smiles kept him calm as makeup was applied, his hair styled, and his suit given last- minute alterations.

Finally, Carol dismissed the prep team, and he was alone with her. “You look very handsome, Daryl,” she said, smiling at him kindly, and then took his hand and placed something cold and metallic in it. “Here. I thought you might want this.”

He opened his hand to find his mother’s necklace in it. He looked back up at Carol, trying to convey the gratitude that was welling up in his chest, before slipping it over his head and tucking it under his shirt.

“Carol,” he managed to choke out, feeling overwhelmed by all that had happened and trying to find some reassurance. Something must have shown on his face, because Carol walked up to him and put her hands on his cheeks. “I dunno how to do this. Ain’t never tried to make people like me before.”

“Daryl, relax,” she said, pushing a flyaway strand of hair out of his eyes. “You made me like you, and you didn’t even try. I’ll be out there the entire time. When they ask you a question, find me, and be honest. Everyone out there already wants to get to know you. Just be yourself.”

Daryl nodded, ducking his head. They stood quietly for a moment, and Daryl allowed himself to relax in her presence. Then too soon, it was time to go. They met the other three tributes on the way to the auditorium, and Daryl found it hard to keep his eyes off Rick. The other boy looked striking in a black suit identical to his own, and the way they fell into step beside each other was almost natural. Daryl snuck glances at Rick every few seconds as they made their way to the auditorium, marveling at how well he cleaned up.

The four of them were ushered into a long hallway with benches along one wall for all forty-eight tributes to sit on while the interviews were going on. Daryl could hear Caesar’s voice and the roaring of the crowd in response from where he was, number forty-seven in the long line of tributes. He saw the first tribute step forward from the very front of the line, escorted by a Capitol servant, and disappear behind a wall onto the stage. He heard Caesar call out “From District 1, Sasha!”

It was a very long wait. Daryl tried to listen to the interviews at first, but soon they started to blend together. By the time the escort appeared at Daryl’s side and led him to a spot just off stage, out of sight of the audience, the combination of boredom and nervousness had just about killed him. He could see Caesar standing, calling out to the Capitol citizens before gesturing toward where Daryl was standing, signaling him to come out.

“From District 12, please welcome Daryl Dixon!”

Daryl walked slowly out on stage, trying to remain tall and confident. He was overwhelmed by just how massive the auditorium was. The huge room extended so far back the floor actually curved upward the further back it went, and he could barely make out individual people at the far end. The lights blinded him, and the deafening applause from the crowd boomed through the auditorium. Caesar was facing him, grinning, his arm outstretched to receive Daryl, and they both sat in the white chairs provided for them. The applause from the crowd died down.

Daryl searched wildly for Carol, until he finally found her familiar face amongst the stylists from the other Districts. He focused on her, breathing as deeply as possible, his heart thumping forcefully against his ribcage.

“Well, Daryl, that was quite an entrance you made the other day,” Caesar said, leaning toward him.

Oh, shit. That wasn’t a question. What was he talking about?

“Um… yeah,” Daryl muttered, confused as to what he was supposed to say.

“Your costumes were certainly very original, very breathtaking. Do you want to tell us about them?” Caesar asked.

Oh, the Tribute Parade. In the crowd, Daryl saw Carol mouth “Be honest” to him. Be honest. Be honest.

“After I realized we weren’t all going to burn to death?” He managed to get out. The audience laughed in response, a real, genuine laugh. His gaze darted through the crowd, surprised, but appreciating their reaction all the same. He looked back at Caesar, who was laughing along with them.

“I have to say, when you came through those doors, my heart stopped,” Caesar said, then turned to the audience. “Did any of you experience that as well?” The crowd cheered assent, and he turned back to Daryl. “Tell me about the flames. Where they real?”

Daryl nodded. “Yeah. They were.”

Caesar’s voice dropped an octave. “You must have been very brave to put such trust into your stylist.”

Daryl blushed and stared at the floor. He wasn’t used to such straightforward compliments.

Caesar grinned at him. “Now Daryl, tell me. I think everyone here is just dying to know. You got the top training score out of all forty- eight tributes. How did you do it?”

The audience cheered. “I don’t think we’re supposed to talk about that,” Daryl said carefully, and immediately felt relieved when shouts of assent came from where the Gamemakers were seated. The rest of the audience theatrically groaned in unison, and Caesar almost pouted at him. “Sorry. Can’t give nothin’ away.”

“All right, Daryl, I have one more question for you,” Caesar said, and the audience quieted. “There are twice as many tributes in this year’s Hunger Games than usual. How do you feel about your odds of winning?”

Be honest. Be honest.

“Survival’s second nature in District 12. We don’t got much else going for us, but we know how to survive. Hopefully that will give me an edge that most others won’t have,” he said darkly. It was the truth. The Career districts didn’t know how to be hungry like he did. They didn’t know what surviving really meant.

Caesar nodded to him gravely. “I wouldn’t count you out in a million years. Ladies and gentlemen, Daryl Dixon!” They stood up, and Caesar took Daryl’s hand and raised it above his head. The crowd roared, and when Caesar released him, Daryl left the stage, thankful it was over.

He met Hershel and Carol outside of the auditorium, and they both congratulated him.

“You did very well, Daryl,” Carol said, and they turned to a TV set into the wall to watch Rick’s interview. Daryl was glad he could watch Rick, instead of only being able to listen.

“Please welcome Rick Grimes!” The crowd cheered as Rick came on stage. Daryl watched as he and Caesar talked about the differences between the Capitol and District 12. Rick said something about the showers being vastly different, and he hadn’t quite mastered all the controls yet, which led to him and Caesar taking turns sniffing each other to determine who smelled better. The crowd roared with laughter the entire time.

And then Caesar brought up Carl. Rick described their good-bye after the Reaping, and that he’d promised Carl he would try to win. The crowd hung on every word, utterly won over by Rick’s sacrifice and love for his little brother. When Rick had finished talking, there was complete silence in the auditorium. There was still time left on the clock, and Caesar took a new turn.

“So Rick, tell me. Is there a special someone back at home?”

“Ah… no, not really,” Rick said unconvincingly, blushing scarlet.

“No? I don’t believe it for a second! Handsome man like you. There must be someone.”

“There is… there is this one boy that I’ve had a crush on forever. I don’t think he really knew who I was until the reaping,” Rick said shyly, still red.

Caesar groaned in sympathy. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Rick. You go out there, and win this thing. And when you get home, he won’t be able to turn you down.” Caesar turned to the crowd. “Right folks?” There was a loud cheer in answer, and he laughed with them.

“Thank you, but I don’t think winning will help in my case.” Rick said quietly, looking torn. Daryl’s eyes were glued to the screen.

“And why not?”

Rick took a steadying breath. “Because… he came here with me.”

Daryl could have sworn that his heart stopped beating right then and there. Rick was talking about him. Rick had had a crush on him forever. Rick had feelings for him.

Suddenly, everything made sense. The heated looks, the way they gravitated toward each other, the way he played up Daryl’s strengths instead of his own. He’d paid attention. But there was nothing either of them could do about it. So why did Rick even bother confessing it?

And then it clicked. The crowd was screaming madly for Rick. He had completely blown away every single other tribute with his declaration of love. Sponsors would be throwing gifts at him. It didn’t matter if it was true or not, he’d only confessed it to boost his own chances of survival. Daryl felt Hershel and Carol’s eyes on him, and he determinedly ignored both of them.

When Rick came out of the auditorium, Daryl was ready. He aimed a blow at Rick, catching the other boy on the jaw and making him stumble. “What the fuck was that?” He snarled, ignoring the look of shock on Rick’s face and pulling his arm back for another punch.

He didn’t get to swing. Hershel had grabbed his arm and was pulling him away from Rick. Daryl didn’t miss the hurt, bewildered look Rick was giving him, and he almost softened. Almost.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Hershel demanded. “He did you a favor!”

“He made me look weak!” Daryl snapped, glaring at Rick, who was touching his bruised jaw.

“Are you an idiot? He turned you two into star- crossed lovers. I can sell that here!”

“We ain’t fuckin’ star- crossed lovers!”

“That doesn’t matter! They only care about keeping things interesting! Being in love just might get you sponsors! And that could damn well save your life!”

Daryl had never seen Hershel this angry, not even when Rick had yelled at him on the train. Carol laid a hand on Daryl’s arm. “He’s right, Daryl,” she said quietly.

Guilt washed over him, and he immediately backed down, refusing to look at any of them. Portia was leading Rick away, and Daryl longed to run after them and apologize to Rick. By hitting him, he’d worsened the other boy’s chances in the arena. Not by much, but still.

“Go get some sleep,” Carol said gently to him, and he numbly made his way into an elevator and back to the twelfth floor. Once he’d gotten back to his room, he stripped and washed off the makeup and hair gel in the shower, replaying the interviews and the aftermath over and over in his head, hating himself.

Two seconds after he’d crawled underneath the covers of his bed, Daryl knew he wasn’t going to fall asleep. Which sucked, because he truly needed his strength for tomorrow. Every moment he gave in to fatigue during the Games increased his chances of death.

But sleep wouldn’t come, and he tossed back and forth on the bed, unable to get thoughts of Rick and the arena out of his head. Did Rick hate him now? What was going to happen in the arena now that he knew Rick loved him? Would there be trees for them to hide in? Daryl remembered a particularly awful year when the arena had been a barren desert. A lot of the tributes had been bitten by snakes or went insane from thirst.

Daryl groaned, wrenched himself out of the bed and climbed up onto the dresser to stare out the window at the rest of the Capitol. Night had fallen completely, and the city looked beautiful. Colorful lights streamed out of every window, street lamps lit up small golden circles on the sidewalks, and the moon washed its pale light over the buildings, giving the entire city an ethereal feel to it. Strangely, the sight was calming for Daryl. He sat on the dresser, his knees brought up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them, and simply gazed at the city.

A soft knock on his door jolted Daryl out of his trance, and startled, he stared at the door in bewilderment. Who the hell would be knocking on his door in the middle of the night? The gentle knock sounded again, and Daryl slid off the dresser to go open the door. He came face to face with the last person he thought would come to see him on the eve of the Games.

Rick Grimes was standing in the hallway, a sheepish look on his face. He was dressed in pajama bottoms and a plain black t-shirt, and Daryl couldn’t help noticing that his hair was mussed in a rather attractive way. The bruise blooming on his jaw sent a fresh wave of guilt through him.

Painfully aware that he was only in a t-shirt and boxers, he growled, “What do you want?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Rick said, ducking his head in embarrassment, but Daryl didn’t know if that was from his own lack of pants or for waking him up at weird times in the night. “Figured I might as well see if you were up.”

“You still wonderin’?” Daryl didn’t let his hostile act drop.

Rick let out a sort of half- laugh and nodded at the floor before looking back at Daryl with an unreadable expression. “Can I come in? I just want to talk.”

“You can talk right where you are.” What the fuck did Rick Grimes want to talk about? The fact that the two of them were highly attracted to each other and that both of them were about to die in the next week or two?

“Please, Daryl? I feel like I owe you an explanation.”

Daryl glared at him for a moment, before opening the door wider and letting the other boy in. He shut the door behind Rick and strode past him to sit on the bed. Rick stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, unsure of where to sit. He settled for leaning against the dresser.

“I just wanted you to know that I didn’t mean that as an insult,” Rick said quietly. “And I don’t expect anything from you,” he added quickly. “I didn’t plan it.”

Daryl didn’t answer right away. He could tell Rick wasn’t lying, but he had no idea what to say. Or rather, he knew what he wanted to say, he just didn’t know if it was a good idea, given their situation.

So he settled for an apology. “Hell, I’m sorry I hit you.”

To his surprise, Rick actually smiled. “Don’t be. It was a good punch.”

Thanks?

“Hey, uh, do you mind if I stay awhile?” Rick had flushed pink.

Daryl shook his head. “Go right ahead. I sure as hell ain’t gonna be sleepin’ tonight anyway.” He pushed himself off the bed and climbed back up onto the dresser. A few seconds later, Rick joined him, their arms brushing against each other. They sat together for a long time, neither of them speaking, watching the sleepless city and holding back what they both desperately wanted to say.

Chapter Text

“Your arm, please.”

Daryl looked up from the floor to see a stern-looking woman dressed in a white uniform holding her hand out to him. He reluctantly raised his arm up, wondering what the hell she wanted. Her fingers enclosed his wrist in a strong grip that practically bruised him, and her other hand produced a syringe tipped with the biggest needle Daryl had ever seen in his life.

“What’s that?” he asked warily, eyeing the needle and trying to be subtle as he leaned away from it. The woman maintained her vicelike grip on his wrist.

“Your tracker,” she answered pointedly, as if it were obvious. She stuck the needle into his arm halfway between the crook of his elbow and his wrist and pushed down the plunger. Ignoring the sharp stab of pain, Daryl watched two tiny purple lights underneath his skin blink rapidly for a second before they disappeared. The only evidence that the tracker was in his arm was a tiny bump in his skin and a drop of blood from where the needle had been.

The woman made her way through the rest of the tributes, injecting trackers into their arms. There were only twenty-four tributes on Daryl’s hovercraft, the other half were on a second hovercraft flying ahead of them. Daryl was seated at the very back on one side of the hovercraft with Rick sitting to his right, and across from them were Karen and Sophia. Karen was trying to look calm and collected, but Daryl could tell she was nervous. She kept tapping her foot on the floor. Sophia was very pale.

Daryl was hyperaware of Rick fidgeting next to him, and he tried to appear as bored as possible. Initially, he had tried looking out the windows of the hovercraft to see if he could figure out where they were heading, but the windows had recently blacked out, shutting out any view of the outside. They were getting close to the arena.

Daryl dropped his head into his hands, trying to relax. They had been flying for roughly half an hour, and he figured he had less than an hour before they were all in the arena, fighting over the provisions at the Cornucopia. He exhaled, and stopped dead when he felt a hand on his knee.

Rick was staring at him, his left hand on Daryl’s knee, his blue eyes full of concern. You alright, man?

Daryl gave him a short nod, meeting Rick’s gaze as evenly as he could, guilt washing over him for the umpteenth time as he saw the purple bruise on Rick’s face. Yeah.

Rick took his hand off of Daryl’s knee just as one of the Peacekeepers began to give directions to the tributes.

“In a few minutes, we will be landing just outside of the arena. You will exit the hovercraft in fours by district. You will be escorted to your Launch Room, which is where you will find your tokens and your uniforms. You will be given half an hour to make any preparations that you need. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

Damn it! Daryl had completely forgotten about the tokens. Each tribute was allowed to bring a small object with them into the arena to remind them of their home or their family or whatever. They were usually rings or letters or something like that, and each token had to be approved before allowed into the arena to make sure it wouldn’t give a tribute an unfair advantage. Daryl knew exactly what he would have picked, but now it was too late. His mother’s necklace was on top of his nightstand in his room back in the Capitol, and unless the angel wings magically became alive and flew the damn thing to the arena, there was no way he was going to get it. He made his way off of the hovercraft escorted alongside his fellow District 12 tributes, despairing over his own stupidity. How, how could he possibly have forgotten about it?

The Peacekeepers marched them quickly off the ramp of the hovercraft and into the only building in sight, a huge thing made of gray brick. It looked odd all by itself in the middle of nowhere. Once they were inside the building, they were immediately led down into the catacombs beneath the arena, long hallways lit by cold blue lights with Peacekeepers at every corner. They arrived at Karen’s Launch Room first, and then Sophia’s, and then Daryl’s.

Before he stepped through the door, he turned to look at Rick. This was the last time they would see each other before they were both in the arena, fighting for their lives. Their eyes met for the briefest moment, and Daryl’s heart wrenched at the unbearable sadness in Rick’s gaze. Daryl longed to tell him that things would be all right, that everything would be okay, but he knew better. Both of them could be flat-out dead in half an hour. So he gave Rick what he hoped was an encouraging blink, and walked into the room.

The Launch Room was a small, square chamber with a tiny bathroom visible through an equally small doorway, two benches on the left and right walls, and a clear cylinder big enough to fit a person on the opposite end of where he walked in. Daryl knew the other tributes were in forty- seven other rooms exactly like this one, preparing for the start of the Games. The Capitol called them the Launch Rooms, but in District 12, they were referred to as the Stockyard. The place animals went before they were slaughtered.

Daryl’s heart leapt when his eyes rested on Carol getting up from the bench and walking toward him. She was the only person other than Rick he would have picked to be with him in the minutes before the Games started, and he immediately strode over to her and into her outstretched arms. Daryl hoped she couldn’t feel him shaking, but he knew it was a long shot.

Too soon, Carol gently disentangled herself from his hold. She picked up a folded set of clothes that had been resting on the bench alongside a pair of leather boots and held them out to him. Daryl silently took them from her and went into the bathroom to put them on. Everything was black except for the laces on his boots, his socks, the small number 12 emblazoned just below the neckline on the back of his T-shirt, and his belt, which were all a light silvery color. Everything fit perfectly.

When he came out, Carol sat him down on a bench, took his hand and said, “These boots are made for running, so there will probably be some open spaces, especially near the Cornucopia. Your shirt isn’t made to keep you warm and they didn’t give you a jacket, so the arena will be probably be hot. That’s about all I can tell you.”

Daryl nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He was a decent runner, and Hershel had told all of them to avoid the bloodbath at the Cornucopia and find water. There was no point in trying to fight bigger and stronger tributes for supplies, they were more likely to get killed that way.

He sat there next to Carol, gripping her hand and trying not to panic. He almost wished he was in the arena, actively fighting for his life was better than quietly waiting for his death. He couldn’t stop thinking about what might be waiting for him. Forest? Mountains? Swamp? What kind of traps would the Gamemakers have hidden? Pits and poison darts and fire and rabid animals…

Daryl stood up abruptly, unable to sit still any longer. He paced the room, aware of Carol’s eyes on him. Half an hour had to be up by now. He couldn’t stand waiting any longer.

“Daryl.” He stopped pacing when Carol said his name. She stood up from the bench and reached her hand into her pocket, drawing out something silver and holding it out to him. “I almost forgot. I managed to get this to the review board at the last minute. If you want it, you can have it as your token.”

His mother’s necklace. Daryl could feel tears pricking at the backs of his eyes as he took the necklace from her and slipped it over his head. Carol was simply amazing. She’d gotten it for him for the interview, and now, when it really mattered, for the Games. He drew her into a hug again, and they stayed like that until a cold, robotic voice came over the loudspeakers, making them both jump.

“Twenty seconds.” The clear cylinder opened up with a soft hiss, and nothing had ever looked less inviting.

Daryl could feel himself shaking harder. It took everything in him to start walking slowly toward the cylinder and step inside of it. The inside was just big enough to hold him, and he hated the caged feeling of it. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to get out of the tube and flee for his life.

“Ten seconds.”

Daryl stiffly turned back toward his stylist. “Carol.”

She smiled at him, and took his hand. “I’m not allowed to bet. But if I could, I’d bet on you, Daryl.”

“Really?” He whispered.

“Really.” She gave his hand one last squeeze as the cylinder began to close, and then the metal plate he was standing on began to rise, pushing him up and out of the room. Instead of dropping into a defensive crouch, he forced himself to stand tall, knowing that this would be the first time Merle would see him since the interviews. He would make his brother proud.

The first things he noticed as the plate pushed him out of the tube was the smell of trees, bright light and humid air. Holy shit, it was hot. Daryl was used to the colder temperatures of District 12, and he hoped his body would adjust to the warm, humid air quickly. He could feel himself starting to sweat already. As soon as his eyes adjust to the light, he began taking in his surroundings.

Trees. And grass. Daryl’s heart soared. The Cornucopia was in the middle of a small grassy clearing surrounded by trees, but there was something not quite right about it. Supplies were scattered all around in front of the giant silver horn, stuff like food, containers of water, medicine, and weapons. Lots of weapons. The most valuable was right in the mouth of the Cornucopia, and the least valuable the furthest from it. The forty- eight tributes formed a huge semicircle in front of it all.

Daryl knew that Hershel wouldn’t want him trying to fight for any of the supplies, but as soon as his eyes locked on the sleek crossbow not two feet away from the mouth of the Cornucopia, he found it difficult to stick to the plan. Run away, and find water. But dammit if that crossbow wasn’t meant for him.

Daryl knew he had to stay on his plate for a full minute, otherwise pressure- triggered explosives would kill him where he stood. He became aware of a voice counting down the seconds over an invisible loudspeaker, no doubt one of the Gamemakers safely sitting behind a set of controls in a cool, clean room.

“Thirty. Twenty- nine. Twenty- eight. Twenty seven.”

And then Daryl realized what was wrong with the arena. The trees surrounding the clearing were too sparse to be part of a forest. Tall, crumbling, gray buildings rose up behind the trees, surrounding the grassy area and the Cornucopia. They stretched toward the sky, almost as tall as the skyscrapers in the Capitol, but with none of their magnificence and beauty. Daryl could see cracked, paved roads leading out of the grassy area in all directions, heading toward the buildings, no doubt part of a weaving labyrinth.

Daryl’s heart sank. The arena was a ruined city.

He needed that crossbow now. He had absolutely no experience hunting in a city, and he needed anything that would give him an advantage. Daryl was a damn good runner. He was faster than any of the other boys in his class at school. If he managed to sprint to the Cornucopia, grab the crossbow and get out before anyone else got there, that would make a damn good start to the Games. This short distance, this was what he was built for.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.”

Daryl’s eyes raked through the rest of the semicircle, trying to find Rick. He found someone that looked like Karen, but she was too far away to tell for sure. He saw Sophia, heartbreakingly tiny compared to the monstrous boy next to her, a determined look on her small face and her body bent over and prepared to run. And then his eyes rested on Rick, who was staring at him. They locked gazes, and Rick shook his head.

“Three.”

What the hell?

“Two.”

Why had Rick shaken his head at him? What did that mean?

“One.”

Son of a bitch! He’d missed his chance. He’d lost those few precious seconds that would have given him a head start, and now there was no way he’d make it to the crossbow and get out before someone caught him. Daryl stepped off the plate awkwardly, and watched the majority of the tributes sprinting toward the Cornucopia. Some of them grabbed whatever was closest and ran for the buildings surrounding them, others continued to race on for the more valuable supplies. Those among the first to grab weapons turned on the slower tributes, silver blades flashing in the sunlight and turning red with blood. He saw Eye Patch Kid grab the crossbow and swing it viciously, a savage grin on his face, hitting a smaller tribute in the head and knocking her down.

Realizing he was just standing there watching the bloodbath like an idiot, Daryl raced twenty yards in for a backpack that no one had taken yet. He grabbed for it just as somebody else did, a boy bigger than him that he didn’t recognize. They both yanked at the straps of the backpack, fighting for it, and then the other boy raised his arm, a wicked-looking dagger in his grip.

Before the boy even began to bring the weapon down, he coughed and blood sprayed out of his mouth. Daryl wrenched the backpack out of his grip as he collapsed, instinctively scooped the dagger off the ground, and glanced around to find the predator that had thrown the knife that was sticking out of the other boy’s back.

Daryl locked eyes with Karen, who was clutching an array of knives in her arms. She gave him a brief nod before turning away and grabbing a package off the ground. He scrambled away from the battling tributes and ran for the trees. Once he reached the treeline, he stopped and surveyed the clearing for a moment. Nearly twenty tributes were still hacking away at each other at the Cornucopia, and bodies littered the ground around it. Too many bodies.

Sickened, Daryl turned away from the scene and continued running. The trees didn’t last long, and too soon he found himself running along one of the cracked paved roads heading into the city. He caught a glimpse of another tribute heading into the city a couple hundred feet from him, and he veered away from them, turning down another street.

Daryl ran until he thought his lungs would burst, and then began alternating between jogging and walking. He didn’t dare stop to look inside the backpack until he had put a few hours’ worth of distance between himself and the other tributes. He knew he could go a long time from his days in the woods, but he kept a lookout for any sign of water or animals. Those were his next priority, especially water with this stifling heat. Daryl knew cities rarely had lakes or ponds, but there might be a river somewhere. There hadn’t been any water at the Cornucopia other than the containers that had surely been snatched up by now.

As he walked, Daryl noticed that every single door leading into the buildings was blocked off by piles of wooden crates, large rocks, and loose debris. Evidently, the Gamemakers didn’t want too many of them getting into the buildings. Daryl kept an eye out for any free doors, but he knew the Gamemakers would have been thorough and he probably wouldn’t find any.

It was late afternoon by the time he turned down a small, discreet alleyway. He sat on one side of an empty trash bin that hid him from anyone looking down one end of the alley and allowed himself to rest while he inspected the contents of the backpack, keeping the dagger ready in case he heard any pursuers. Daryl pulled out a rolled-up thin black sleeping bag, a small coil of fishing line, a package of dried fruit and nuts, a sleeve of crackers, a tiny metal tube containing ten matches, and a half-gallon water bottle that was bone dry.

He stared at the bottle. How hard would it have been for the Gamemakers to fill the damn thing? His shirt was sticking to his back, and he could feel sweat dripping down the sides of his face. He needed to find water, and fast. The heat of the arena would kill him before anything else did. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

And then he heard them. The cannons. Each shot represented one dead tribute, and since the Gamemakers never fired the cannons or collected the bodies on opening day until the killers had dispersed, the fighting at the Cornucopia must have finally stopped. Daryl counted the shots silently. One… two… three… and on until they finally stopped at nineteen. Nineteen tributes dead, twenty-nine left to play.

Daryl’s thoughts immediately turned to Rick. He’d managed so far to keep from thinking about him, but now, after the shots had been fired, he couldn’t help but worry about him. Had he made it through the day? The last thing Daryl could remember was Rick shaking his head at him before the countdown had run out. He had no idea what had happened to him after the action started.

Daryl stifled the urge to throw up. What if Rick had been killed? What if he was gone already? What if he was in a hovercraft right now, still and bled white, ready to be cleaned up and shipped home in a wooden box? Daryl buried his face in his hands. Maybe that would be for the better, if he were out of the Games for good. He wouldn’t have to face the task of surviving the next few weeks, starving and sleeping with one eye open, constantly terrified of his life ending in a split second.

Daryl would find out who had died later that night, when the Gamemakers projected images of the dead in the sky for all to see. He tried to force thoughts of Rick out of his head, but they stayed like flies on honey. He shoved everything except the dagger back into the backpack and slung it onto his shoulders.

He instantly dropped into a fighting stance with the dagger upraised when he heard footsteps coming toward him. He didn’t dare move until he’d figured out what was moving toward him, whether it was food, another tribute, or something else entirely. As he listened, his body tensed and ready to run, he realized the footsteps were off somehow. Like the thing making them was slowly dragging its feet against the pavement, making a soft tschhh sound.

Daryl flattened himself against the wall when the shadow of whatever was walking came around the corner of the building. Luckily, one of the piles of wooden crates and rubble was hiding him from its view, and as he listened, the thing walked right past the alleyway and kept going. When the soft scraping sound of its feet had died away, Daryl cautiously peeked around the trash bin to make sure it had gone. A strange smell had been left in its wake, making his stomach churn and reminding him of the trash at the butcher’s shop back in District 12 that had been full of rotten or infested meat. Daryl took off in the opposite direction, not wanting to run back into it.

This time, instead of blindly running through the city, Daryl paused every time he reached the edge of a building to peek around corners. He didn’t want to turn a corner and run smack dab into something dangerous. He knew the Gamemakers were probably airing shots of each living tribute now that the bloodbath at the Cornucopia had stopped, and he wanted potential sponsors to see that he had at least a little bit of common sense and could keep his head. A lifetime of watching the Games told him that sponsors generally didn’t support the tributes who panicked easily or didn’t think twice about what they were doing until it came back and bit them in the ass.

Daryl stopped at the corner of yet another building, feeling like the fucking city would go on forever. He sighed and sat down, trying to ignore his parched throat. His mind felt fuzzy and his stomach grumbled, but he didn’t dare break into his precious store of fruit and crackers yet. His breakfast from that morning felt like a very long time ago. The sun was beginning to sink toward the horizon, casting long shadows and giving the city a creepy feel.

As he sat staring at the skyscraper in front of him, an idea dawned on him. If the Gamemakers had only put debris in front of the doors and hadn’t actually locked the buildings, he might be able to climb up to a roof and see the entire arena from there. That way, he could find a source of water and see if there were any forested areas in the arena.

His spirits lifted, Daryl jumped up and searched for a door close by that didn’t have too much rubble in front of it. He began shifting the crates, which were luckily empty, and rocks as quietly as he could. The Gamemakers hadn’t put anything in the pile that couldn’t be moved by someone his size, so they probably weren’t too concerned if a few tributes got into the buildings. Daryl twisted his mouth into a grimace at the idea of traps inside to flush tributes out of the buildings if they stayed too long or tried to wait out the Games by holing up in a closet somewhere. Wouldn’t want the Games to get boring.

Daryl had almost freed one of the doors when the new pile of rubble he’d made started to shift. He stared in horror as the top of the pile began to slide, the noise echoing off the buildings and making adrenaline lance through him. One of the rocks hit an empty crate, cracking the boards with a sickeningly loud crunch. It seemed like forever before the mini avalanche finally stopped, leaving Daryl standing next to the almost-freed door waiting for a horde of enemies to converge upon him.

He drew his dagger. His only choices were to run, or try and get into the building before anyone nearby found him. Two sucky-ass choices. If he ran, he faced the chance of running into another tribute or one of the things that had passed him earlier. If he tried to get into the building, he faced the chance that someone had heard the noise and would come looking for him. If they saw the freed door, they might decide to look for him in the building, leaving him trapped.

Daryl heard the things before he saw them. The scraping of their feet on the paved ground and the ghastly way they moaned sent shivers of fear through him. Then the rotten-meat smell hit him like a punch to the gut, and he almost threw up right then and there. And then he saw them.

They came from both directions, four on his left and what looked like a pack of ten on his right. They shuffled and lurched slowly toward him, their dead, unblinking eyes staring at him with mindless hunger. They were all in various stages of decomposition, gray skin falling off and exposing congealed blood and rotten muscle underneath. One was even missing an entire arm, tendons and ligaments hung like ropy strings from its shoulder socket.

But that wasn’t what scared Daryl the most. What really got adrenaline pumping through his veins and every bit of him screaming for him to run was that they were unmistakably human. Or had been. These weren’t creatures cooked up by the Capitol in their labs. There was no way they could engineer monsters like this without having done some sort of experiment on actual human beings.

Daryl let out a wild yell and threw himself at the door, trying to break it down. There was no way he would survive fighting this many of these things, especially since he didn’t know how best to kill them. He couldn’t get around them to run, slow as they were, there were simply too many. His only way to survive was to break the damn door down and try to hide inside the building.

A door that looked as if it had no intention of being broken down.

Chapter Text

Daryl’s shoulder screamed in protest as it connected with the door again, and the only two things he was aware of was the pounding of blood in his ears and the horrible moaning of the creatures as they shuffled closer and closer to him, their rotting arms reaching out for him.

But the door would just not fucking break. No matter hard Daryl threw himself at it, it wouldn’t give. He tried to keep himself from succumbing to the panic that was threatening to overwhelm him, but the pack was closing in and it was all he could do to keep from screaming and bringing enemy tributes down on him too.

The dead things- the dead people- were practically on top of him, whipping themselves into a frenzy over their cornered prey. Daryl prepared himself for one last launch at the door. If it didn’t break down this time, he wouldn’t let himself die cowering against the wall. No, he would go down fighting, hand to hand with the monsters and he would take out as many as he could before they tore him apart. A low roar ripped itself out of his throat as Daryl threw himself at the door with every last bit of adrenaline-fueled might he could muster.

And it broke.

Whatever had been keeping it closed snapped and the door flew inward, carrying Daryl with it. He toppled awkwardly into the building, bruised his face on the floor and rolled a little ways before scrambling to his feet. He didn’t even glance back at the horde of the walking dead behind him as he sprinted down the long, unlit hallway in front of him. He knew they were right behind him, stumbling through the doorway with their unsettling, lurching gait, and he had only one thing on his mind anyway. Run.

Hyperaware of the growls echoing behind him, Daryl ran like he never had before, his breath coming in huge, heaving gasps as his traitorous brain conjured up images of cold, lifeless hands clutching at him and yellowing teeth sinking into his skin. He flew past doors with grimy windows and old benches haphazardly shoved against the walls. Before he knew it, he had reached the end of the hallway and found himself confronted by a set of double doors.

As he slammed into them, trying to get them open as fast as possible, Daryl let himself glance back at the horde behind him to gauge their distance.

To his complete and utter bewilderment, none one of them had even managed to get halfway down the hallway. They were still intent on their prey, and they were moving more quickly than when he had first spotted them, but for all their snarling and terrible humanness, none of them were moving faster than a staggering half-run, half-walk.

Daryl didn’t allow himself to relax. The Gamemakers were infamous for engineering terrible things that had traits bordering on the supernatural, and he’d seen too many tributes let their guard down for a second and die as a result. He pulled open the double doors and ran up the concrete staircase behind them, not stopping to wait and see if the walkers were intelligent enough to pull open the doors.

Daryl raced up the stairs until it felt like his lungs would burst and his legs were pumping acid instead of blood. Even then, he refused to stop and continued to climb despite his muscles’ protests. He paused after a few minutes and crouched down to listen for growls echoing up the staircase that meant the walkers were following him, but the stairwell was completely silent. Daryl let himself take a few deep, shaky breaths to try and stop his hands from trembling. They had not managed to get through the doors. But that had been a close motherfucking encounter. Too close, and all he wanted to do now that the adrenaline had subsided was sit on his ass and cry and feel sorry for himself.

But he knew he was more than likely on camera right now, unless there was a life or death fight going on somewhere else. His life had been in serious danger for the first time and the Gamemakers would want to broadcast how he was going to handle it. And Daryl was not weak. The fiery depths of Hell would freeze over before he gave the entire country a reason to believe otherwise and lost all his chances of gaining a sponsor or two.

So Daryl pushed himself back up and continued to climb the seemingly endless stairs. He kept his expression stoic and calm, as if he hadn’t been affected at all by the walkers. But now that the immediate threat of the walkers had gone, he became painfully aware of the pounding of his heart, the dryness in his throat and the copious amounts of sweat causing his clothes to stick to his skin.

As he slowly made his way up the stairs, trying not to sweat any more than he already had, his thoughts turned back to getting up to the roof. Not only would it give him a damn good view of the arena, it would show sponsors that he wasn’t completely stupid and prove that he was able to keep his head after life threatening situations. He kept an eye out for hidden traps that Gamemakers might have set to keep tributes off the roof, but he eventually made it to the top floor without incident.

He clambered out of an open window onto the ancient fire escape jutting out from the side of the wall. His view of this side of the arena was exceptional, but there was no break in the expanse of the tall gray buildings of the ruined city, no snatches of blue or silver that would signal water. He saw a loose group of small humanoid figures moving sluggishly along a street far below him, and he wondered with a jolt if they were the freshly formed Career pack, hunting down tributes that had failed to run far enough or hide cleverly enough. His chest contracted in cold fear when he realized it was more of the walkers, ambling along aimlessly until they encountered fresh meat. Jesus, how many of them were there? Did they fill the entire city? The entire arena?

Daryl sat for a moment, contemplating the problem of the dangerous walker population and enjoying the cooling effect of the wind on his sweaty face. The setting sun was throwing vibrant oranges and pinks across the blue sky as it began its descent toward the horizon. He figured he had roughly an hour before it would be completely dark, and he wanted to see what was on the other side of the arena before finding himself somewhere to hide for the night.

As he pulled himself up the narrow ladder leading onto the roof, one of Daryl’s boots slipped on the metal rungs at the same time a particularly strong gust of wind blasted him. He was knocked sideways and for a second, he was flailing, eighty stories in the air above a rickety fire escape, holding on with only his hands as he struggled to get a grip again.

One of his boots hit something solid behind him. Daryl finally managed to get himself stabilized on the ladder, and he twisted to see what he possibly could have kicked. For a moment, he stared blankly into space as there were no protective metal bars encircling the ladder he was on. Keeping a firm grip on a metal rung, Daryl reached out a hand and leaned toward the empty space behind him. His hand bumped something solid and invisible two feet away, and he snorted in derision. Typical of the Gamemakers to add a force field around the ladder. Wouldn’t want any tributes throwing themselves off a building. No excitement or suspense for the audience.

Daryl quickly pulled himself up the rest of the way and stood staring eastward. The arena was roughly circular as far as he could tell, since the edges seemed hazy and far away. Daryl’s view was completely unbroken, and the city occupied about a third of the arena before dropping into a short expanse of tangled roads and fields. But it was the sight of the green forest that covered the entire eastern half of the arena that had Daryl gripping the handle of his dagger with almost feverish excitement as he dared to hope for the best. The trees would have food for him to catch and places for him to hide. If he made it to that forest, he had a fighting chance to get out of this place alive.

Daryl stayed on the roof a little longer, trying to memorize the arena before it got too dark. There was a small patch of green in the heart of the city that marked where the Cornucopia was located, a long, skinny break in the expanse of forest that might be a river or a gorge, and another circular bare spot near the edge that was likely a small pond. The only thing that unsettled him was how many of the walkers there seemed to be wandering the city streets. Daryl strained to see any quickly moving figures that might indicate his fellow tributes, but they were all either bunkering down for the night or else hidden amongst the buildings.

At last, when he finally admitted to himself that he wouldn’t be able to glean any more information from the rapidly darkening landscape, Daryl went back to the ladder and resigned himself to sleeping on the fire escape for the night. The roof felt too open and the inside of the building felt too claustrophobic, but the fire escape would keep him hidden from view from anyone looking up and the force field was an oddly comforting bonus. He dragged some old benches and storage cabinets around to block the door leading to the stairwell and the window that led to the fire escape for added security. Almost as soon as Daryl had finished building himself a kind of nest out of his sleeping bag, he heard the anthem, magnified so all the remaining tributes would hear it. The Gamemakers played the anthem right before they showed the death recap, and Daryl scrambled back up to the roof, suddenly desperate to see whether Rick had survived the first day.

Back home, he knew Merle would be watching a full coverage of each and every death with exclusive commentary by Claudius and Caesar. But broadcasting the details of the killings would give an unfair advantage to the living tributes, like if Daryl had managed to get a hold of the crossbow and shot someone with it, everyone would know his secret, so only simple headshots and district numbers were shown in the arena.

The first headshot suddenly appeared, pale silvery white against the blue-black sky. It was one of the boys from District 2, which meant that all of the tributes from District 1 had survived, including Eye Patch Kid. Daryl took a deep breath and ticked the first of the nineteen off on his fingers. The next two were both of the girls from District 3. Then a blond girl from 4- Amy, he thought was her name. All four tributes from 5. A boy from 6 that Daryl remembered was called Jim from the interviews. Both girls from 7. A boy and a girl each from 8 and 9. Yes, there was the boy Daryl had fought with over the backpack. Both boys from 10.

Daryl held his breath as the headshot of one of the boys from 11 hung in the air. There was only one more tribute to go, were they from District 12? Would it be Rick’s face he saw next, flashing silver in the sky? Sophia’s? No, there was one of the girls from 11, and then the Capitol seal was back with a final flourish of the anthem before it blinked out, plunging Daryl back into darkness.

He crept back to his sleeping bag, feeling relieved that Rick and the others had survived and almost shameful because of it. He didn’t understand the conflicting emotions that arose whenever he thought of Rick, the emotions that he tried to squash down every time they came up. Gratitude for the edge Rick had given him by professing his love for him in the interview. The warmth that blossomed in his chest every time his face came to mind, the memory of the way he had blushed when asked if he had anyone special. The dread that his face would be part of the death recap, floating silvery- white in the sky as his cold body was sent back to District 12. The terror that they might meet in the arena and be forced to fight.

The awful, heart-wrenching thought that in order for Daryl to survive and go home, Rick had to die.

Chapter Text

Daryl awoke with a start, his heart hammering and one thought in his mind.

I am about to die.

He lay rigid in his sleeping bag, not daring to move a muscle. His gaze darted around as every fiber of his being screamed at him to find the danger, to find what had woken him up so suddenly in the middle of the night. The night was unnaturally black, without even stars winking overhead to break the uniform darkness around him. He was thankful he’d had the foresight to tuck himself against the side of the building so nothing could get behind him, but goddammit, his eyes couldn’t seem to get used to the darkness and he still hadn’t found the danger that he was absolutely sure was going to kill him at any moment.

Even more unsettling was the utter silence. Daryl was used to hearing the sounds of wind rustling through trees, crickets chirping, and the calls of owls at night. Here in the arena, there was nothing. Nothing to keep the wall of silence from pressing in on his ears.

Until he realized that there was something breaking through the eerie stillness. Something that made adrenaline shoot through his veins and caused his blood to run cold at the same time. Screaming.

Somewhere close to him, somebody was screaming as desperately and as hopelessly as if they were dying and it was being drawn out in a very painful and agonizing way. Daryl gripped his sleeping bag hard enough to make his knuckles turn white to keep himself from covering his ears like a little kid. Fuckin’ hell, nobody should have to suffer like that. The shrieks reach an unbearable pitch, echoing off of the buildings, and Daryl couldn’t stop himself from conjuring up mental images of Rick, Sophia and Karen, fervently hoping none of them were the ones being tortured.

He ground his teeth together, forcing himself to listen. Someone was dying, and hell if he wasn’t gonna stick with them. It was stupid, and it did them no good, and even if they didn’t know they weren’t alone, he couldn’t let them die by themselves. It was too heartless.

And then, as suddenly as it had woken him up, the screaming stopped. Daryl waited for the cannon blast to signal the tribute’s death, but no shot came. Had they managed to get away?

Daryl shivered. He had a feeling that the tribute was still suffering, but they were doing so in silence now. The abrupt stillness pressed on his ears again, and he became aware of how cold the night was. His face was nearly numb. Even though he had taken a risk to get it, Daryl knew the backpack he’d grabbed would prove to be invaluable. The sleeping bag would reflect his body heat and keep him warm at night while other tributes would struggle to stay warm without lighting fires.

Unnerved by the screaming and the following silence, Daryl was tempted to pack up and start moving now that he was awake, but he had no idea how well the walker things hunted in the dark. For all he knew, they got faster and stealthier after the sun went down. He also would have bet a lifetime’s worth of victor winnings that the Careers had formed their wolf pack by now. The four tributes from District 1 and the six left from 2 and 4, along with whoever else they had invited to be part of them. If they weren’t the ones that attacked whoever had been screaming, they were probably close by, combing the streets for victims and itching to use their shiny new weapons. He couldn’t risk getting caught with only a dagger to defend himself against a group of ten trained killers, if not more.

Out of nowhere, a cannon blast exploded through the silence, making Daryl jump. Fuck. He sat up in his sleeping bag and rested his forehead on his knees, allowing himself a brief moment of weakness. Twenty-seven to go.

Unable to go back to sleep, he tried to work out who was left. The ten Career tributes, including Eye Patch Kid, the muscular boy with the crazed look he’d seen during training, and the dark-skinned girl who’d wielded a katana like it was an extension of her arm. The Greene sisters from 10, that tall, stick-thin girl from 8 with the long hair. Laura? Lori? Something like that. It was difficult to remember who was left, there had been so many tributes to begin with.

Damn, he was thirsty. It made it hard to think. Daryl’s stomach was growling, but after living his entire life barely staving off starvation, going one day without eating was nothing he couldn’t handle. His store of crackers and fruit was too valuable to break open so early in the Games anyway. But the sandpapery feeling of his tongue was not something he was used to. Daryl had always been able to drink from streams or melt snow when he was out hunting back at District 12. This unquenchable thirst rather fucking sucked, his mind always seemed to drift back to the weird stickiness in his mouth.

Daryl’s heart contracted painfully at the thought of District 12. Shitty as it was, it was still his home and he missed the relative safety of the forest outside the fences. A pack of rabid wild dogs suddenly seemed tame compared to the arena. Hell, just about everything did. Except maybe figuring out what the hell Rick was always doing inside his head.

Shut the fuck up and deal with it, his subconscious snarled at him. You’re in the arena now, so quit feeling sorry for yourself and quit thinking about Rick. Start thinking about how you’re gonna survive.

He squirmed back into his sleeping bag and for a couple of hours did nothing but wait for dawn and listen to the sound of his own breathing. Years of hunting had taught him how to be able to sit still for hours on end and never lose patience or become restless. Once the sky lightened, he resolved to head for the forest. He needed water, but he didn’t like the idea of going to the long skinny break in the forest in case it turned out to be a gorge. He would effectively trap himself between the walls of the gorge to get to the water, and if the Career pack managed to find him, it would be all too easy to surround him. The little circular spot was closer anyway, and if it turned out to be a pond, there might be fish in it for him to catch.

The only problem was crossing the expanse of fields and roads. It was only a kilometer or two at the most, something he could easily run across in a few minutes, but he still ran the risk of someone seeing him. He might be able to amble across it slowly and hope that if anyone saw him they would think he was a walker, but he hated the idea of being exposed for so long. He needed trees above him, not endless sky.

The only thing to do was to sprint across right before dawn came and hope for the best.

When the sky began to show the first hint of deep blue instead of black, Daryl left his sleeping bag and rolled it up as quietly as he could. It was still cold, but once he got his muscles moving he wouldn’t notice it. He stole back into the building and down the stairs, all the way to the first floor. He was about to push open the double doors that led to the first-floor hallway where he had fled from the walker pack when he stopped abruptly.

The rotten-meat smell was still there. It wasn’t strong, but it was unmistakable, and as he watched, the doors moved. The movement was very slight, but something on the other side was pushing on them and causing them to shift inward as far as the hinges would let them go. Whatever was pushing on them obviously didn’t realize that the doors needed to be pulled in order to open. The awful screeching sound of nails on metal sounded from the other side of the doors, accompanied by soft moans that could only mean one thing.

Daryl stared at the doors, incredulous. The walker pack from the previous night hadn’t left. They knew their prey had gone through the double doors and even if it took them forever they would scratch their way through that door to get it. They were mindless, intent on only one thing and they would never stop until they got it.

Shit. How the hell was he going to get out of the building now? Staying inside wasn’t an option, he had no idea what kinds of traps the Gamemakers had set up, and as thirsty as he was, he wouldn’t last more than a few more days. He couldn’t drop from a second-floor window, if he didn’t land right he could end up injured and destroy his already minuscule chance of survival.

Back to the fire escape it was. Daryl turned away from the double doors and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He needed to hurry, he’d already lost too much time from the walkers blocking the easiest way out of the building.

Thankfully, Daryl managed to clamber out of a window and lower the ladder of the fire escape without making too much noise. Keeping low to the ground, he took off running as quietly as he could, but seeing as he was racing the sunrise, or whatever passed for a sunrise in the godforsaken arena, he couldn’t afford to take his time.

“Come on,” he growled under his breath, forcing himself to ignore the stabbing pain in his side. He was going as straight east as he could, but there was no way to go straight out of the mass of lifeless gray buildings. Daryl couldn’t remember the last time he’d run so far and so quickly, but if he didn’t reach the edge of the city soon, he would have to risk holing up in another building. And he really didn’t want to go another fucking day without water. But what worried him the most was that every time a walker saw him pass by, it followed him. Slowly, but Daryl knew from the pack in the building that it would keep following him even if it couldn’t see him.

Just as Daryl started wondering if he should break into another building, he turned a corner and finally saw a break in the city leading out. He ran until he reached the last bit of city, and then he slowed down to give himself a moment to rest. Dawn was coming very quickly, but he still had time before he lost the cover of semidarkness.

Panting hard, Daryl crouched against the side of a building to try and slow his breathing and his racing heart. Sixty seconds. That’s all you get. He stared across the expanse of fields and roads, wiping the sweat out of his eyes and gathering his nerve.

And then he ran. His pack slapped against his back as he pounded across the terrain, with thoughts of pursuing Careers and walkers driving him ever faster. The distance seemed to stretch on forever, though it only took him a few minutes to cross it.

After what felt like ages, Daryl finally burst through the shrubs of the treeline and tumbled to the ground, gasping for air. His legs burned and his hands were shaking, but he’d made it. This was his element. As soon as he found a source of water and a good hiding place, and got his hands on the crossbow, he would be someone to be reckoned with.

Daryl waited until the spots cleared from his vision before pushing himself up and looking back toward the city, hoping that he’d managed to get across without being seen.

And stared in horror at the pack of ten figures making their way across the field.