strangers into the unknown [district 6 train]

Her voice echoes as he tries to come to. 

Everything's been a blur since he was reaped minutes ago, nothing quite makes sense at the moment. His head spins and spins until it lands on the only other person on the train, "...do I?" 

"Uhh, nah," he chimes in. She had been reaped first and between his name getting called to this moment here, he hadn't thought outside himself once. Am I going to die? A question too heavy to think of an answer to, he pictured Demetria's face somewhere in the crowd as he's being pulled away. It's hard to focus on anything other than the sinking in his stomach, how is this real? "Sorry, I don't think I've been there," he scratches the back of his head as he mulls it over for a second. 

Nope. 

Delta leans over to a window momentarily, feeling the motion of the train under his feet. They're already out of the station and headed towards the unknown, a feeling of unreadiness takes over him. Only when he pulls away from the sight and take back in the train carriage does he feel okay, "wine, for sure." He wasn't much of a drinker, some of the other boys at the facility had started young, but not him. At least, until now. 

He watches as she pours the thick wine into a glass, and he simply nods when he takes it from her, waiting for a matching glass to cheers to. District 6 had no company besides each other, and it all feels so uncertain being just two teenagers going into this blind. Delta sips the wine before finding what to say next, "what does your family sell? I dunno, maybe I have been." A better question than the one in his back pocket - what'd you say your name was again?

Delta hadn't even noticed she went for water over wine until he was recoiling from the taste alone. Wine didn't taste like how he expected, the only alcohol he had ever tried was some rye beer a friend of a friend brought to work once. That guy got fired, but Delta stayed in the clear - you see, that's what happens when you keep your head down. 

He wondered how he would do the same here. Keep his way out of trouble long enough for it to all be over; is there even a way? Delta was no fighter, and he didn't want his brothers seeing him like that, especially in what could be his final moments. The wine felt more like a comfort item, something to busy his hands with until he was ready to be completely present in the moment. "That seems pretty important, selling meds," the people of 6 needed that. 

Those that aren't sick work until they are, Delta watched it happen in real time. 

There's a moment where he wants to laugh at how his district partner rambles, but it never comes. Instead just a solemn chuckle as she winds herself up, "hey, it's all good, I love to talk," he says, trying to convince himself. He does, normally, in a situation like this not so much but he had never found himself in such until now. There isn't anyone here to guide them through it either, "I work at an incinerator facility. Blue Harbors, if you've heard of it." 

Well shit, this is one way to get a Saturday off. 

"Some of my brothers work there, and my dad does too," talking about family hurts most of all, he realizes quickly. A pang in his chest that only feels like the sharp blade of home sickness, he tries not to waiver from the thought of them. "How's your family, they alright?"

As she talks about her family, Delta takes breaks from eye contact to look out the window and to sip his wine. If he wasn't stuck inside the impeding fear, he'd be at least enjoying the moment. The train ride isn't too shabby, the wine is good and his district partner isn't half bad. At least she talks, he grimaces thinking of how worse off it'd be sitting in silence. Just thinking, and thinking, and waiting. 

That'd be torture. 

"Woah, lot of sisters," he interrupts, cracking his first smile, however small it may be, since the damned Reaping. "That's funny, my parents kept trying for a girl and wound up with four sons," his mom would be so jealous- well, maybe not five girls, but still. He continues to sip his wine as she talks about the Thatchers, another name he didn't quite recognize but nodded along as if he did. Delta doesn't realize how deep he's drunken into his glass until it's half empty. 

Better slow down. He mulls over a second glass after this one but decides against it; the last thing he needs is to show up drunk at the Capitol. Who knows what hell they'll put them through before throwing them to the pit? She moves in and he shuffles forwards a tad, paying her the attention she deserves as she continues to speak. 

"Do you think we could help each other?" 

"I- uh," I don't think that's how this works lingers in the back of his throat. Are they allowed to do that? He had settled on doing this alone, keeping his head down and out of the lion's mouth, but this girl doesn't look like much of a fighter. He's easily bigger, as he imagines he will be with a lot of the other tributes. "If I can help, I will," he says after a second's hesitation. 

Delta says so by instinct before he's fully thought it through, a guardian by nature. If he's going to do this at all, it'll be on his terms, as painlessly as possible. "They change the colosseum each year, but the districts are always lined up in order, yeah? It won't be hard to stick together, I'll just be to your right." Desperate times, desperate measures, he hopes he can trust this girl when it comes down to it.

The warmer the wine makes him, the harder it is to avoid falling into the spiral at hand. It waits there right in front of him, inviting him to collapse so freely as he thinks of home and death and all things in between. It's hard to be in this situation and not think of the family behind you, Delta wishes for anything in this moment to see his parents one more time. To hold Demetria's hand and tell her it'll be okay, one way or another. 

He may never get it - better get used to the feeling. 

"I'm hoping some of these other districts hate each other at first sight honestly," how much easier would this be if a few showed up dead on arrival. He holds his face in his hands at the thought, almost ashamed at letting himself think of other people that way. So casually, he desperately clings to humanity as if it's his last layer of defenses. "Maybe they've wasted so much money on this stupid event that they couldn't afford the extra dozen carriages," wouldn't that be something? 

What's he even dying for again? Despair and rage go hand and hand, he feels waves of both and despises it. He's normally so upbeat, but how can he be? 

His district partner asks if he's ever hurt anyone, and he buffers for a second. "No way! At least, I never meant to," it happens on accident when you're big and clumsy, but on purpose? "I've broken a few fights up before, but me?" He stops talking before he puts his foot in his mouth; he needs her to think he'll protect them both. He'll die trying, sure, but he can't go into this with her doubting him off the start. 

If he can't fight, how is he ever going to be able to kill. Even in his thoughts, the word feels so heavy. Commanding, consuming, he shakes it away the best he can and fails. "How about you?" He can't imagine so, but it sure would be helpful right about now.