Chapter Text
Keith
The coal dust clung to everything.
It was in Keith’s boots, his lungs, the cracks of his knuckles and the folds of his collar. It stuck no matter how many times he scrubbed, like grief, like the scent of smoke after a fire long since burned out. It coated the world in gray. Like a curse you couldn’t wash off.
Like the memory of his mother. Or the feeling that something worse was always coming.
And today, it came.
The sky hung low and heavy, the color of old steel. Even the wind held its breath, and the town square of District Twelve stood silent beneath it. Not the kind of silence you found in sleep or solitude, but the awful, taut quiet of Reaping Day. When the whole district stood shoulder to shoulder, pretending they weren’t afraid.
Keith stood near the back of the crowd, where the shadows from the buildings stretched long and sharp. His jaw was set, arms crossed tight over his chest. The white shirt he’d been forced into itched against his skin, thin, starched, better suited for Capitol cameras than cold mountain mornings. But he didn’t fidget. Didn’t move
He just stared at the stage like he was daring it to blink first.
He was seventeen, Eighteen was just a month away. Too old to hope his name wouldn’t be called. Too young to pretend he didn’t care. Every year since he was twelve, he’d taken out extra tesserae. He didn’t need the food. Not really. Not for himself. But the orphanage did. The kids needed him to be strong. Needing someone to keep the heat on, the medicine stocked.
It had cost him something. His name was in that bowl more times than he could count.
The Capitol escort, Miranzi Crane, teetered up the stairs to the platform, heels too high for the cracked wood beneath her. She came every year, like clockwork, carried in by a silver train and swept through the Seam with perfume that never masked the stench of fear.
Her hair gleamed like polished brass, curled so tight it looked like it might snap off if she turned too fast. Today it was stacked into a towering updo, glittering with rhinestone pins shaped like doves. Her lipstick, always a violent shade of cherry red, was smeared slightly on one tooth, the same way it had been the last four Reaping Days.
Keith didn’t know if anyone ever told her. Or if she cared.
Her voice cut through the air like broken glass, high, artificial, and far too cheerful.
“Welcome, welcome! Happy Reaping Day!”
No one cheered. No one clapped. No one ever did.
“Ladies first,” she cooed, reaching into the bowl with fingers tipped in gleaming red lacquer.
Keith didn’t hear the name. Didn’t need to. A scream broke out somewhere to his left. A girl crying, choking on her own panic as she was pulled forward by the peacekeepers. He didn’t look. Didn’t flinch.
“And now,” the escort chirped, eyes scanning the silent crowd, “for the boys!”
There was a long pause. Her fingers rustled through the slips of paper like dead leaves in winter.
“Keith Kogane.”
The name didn’t hit him right away. It sounded strange, wrong, like it didn’t belong in her mouth. The crowd shifted. Heads turned. Whispers rose like smoke.
He didn’t move.
“Come along now, dear,” the woman said, tone sharpening. Peace Keepers shifted their gaze to him, ready for his rebellion.
Keith stepped forward slowly. Deliberately. Each step thudded in his ears like a war drum. The crowd parted around him, people too scared to meet his eyes. No one was surprised.
Poor, quiet Keith from the edge of the Seam. Alone. Unclaimed.
He caught the mayor’s gaze for a brief second. Then dropped it.
They lined him up beside the girl—Mira. Keith knew her well enough, Her face was blotchy from crying, shoulders trembling. The camera drones zoomed in, but Keith didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. But he didn't shrink into himself, he lifted his shoulders, but his demeanor remained slack.
Forgettable.
Let them think he was no one. Let them believe he’d die fast, quiet, unremarkable.
Because if he was going to survive this, the game had already begun.