[D3] 75th Hunger Games Volunteering Thread

She had been picking up the minute cogs and springs from the remains of the mechanical grasshopper for the three hours since her mother crushed it at breakfast. Her fingers started to bleed sometime during the second hour, but they were raw with splinters even before that. No one needed to tell her how vital it was she fished every screw, every bolt from the cracks in the floorboards – or at least all the salvageable ones; despite being in a District often fondly called Battery City for its abundance of wires and electrodes on offer, simple mechanical pieces themselves were harder to come by, especially ones made for the delicate work Ave indulged in.

In that moment at breakfast, where the woman had snatched the whirring toy from the table and flung it into the ground, the room went from being filled with laughter – from Ave and her sister – to shouts of protests. It was only then when her mother’s heel came down firmly onto the obsessively polished exoskeleton that deathly silence descended. Ave herself went from indignation to horror in a matter of heartbeats, suddenly and instantaneously feeling shock and disgust gripping her throat like a gauntlet.

Her mother had always been as delighted by the moving trinkets as Ave’s sister Onyx was, but the inventor probably could have seen the signs that that time had expired. Under the bright sunlight that marked the end of another difficult winter, the woman’s skin was translucent thin and pale enough that it was almost as if you could stand behind her and your shadow would show through. She barely ate the food put in front of her, as much as Ave urged her to, and now it was becoming even more vital to eat whenever there was an opportunity to. In the weeks leading up to their Quell announcement, provisions like food and power were subtly reduced in quantity – though Ave, good at spotting patterns as she was, understood the reason for it. By the time they announced that for every child who put themselves forwards, the District would be rewarded with larger rations, bounteous power and heat, the people were mad to comply. It’s extraordinary how something so simple, controlled by people so far away, could have such a stark effect on the normal citizens being made to suffer for this sport.

But though she could predict the actions of the Capitol dedicatedly enough to comprehend their decisions regarding this, the 75th Games, she had reached the dead end of a long and laborious labyrinth with what had caused her mother’s distress. Was it loneliness? Ave knew their father was probably as good as dead wherever he was since he disappeared weeks before. Indeed, she hoped he was dead – it was far better than some of the alternatives. Yes even before he left, the woman had become increasingly distracted, her gaze unfocussed as if deep in thought, yet thinking about nothing at all.

Ave saw this act of destruction, a piece of her personal treasure, a proud achievement in its detail and its eerie almost-sentience, as a peak – things couldn’t get any worse, but they would remain this bad if the girl did nothing to change them. Because she was active, she wanted to find solutions. She was never the sort of person who let herself suffer when there was a better way.

In the space between the incident and the Quell rule coming into action on Reaping day, Ave could think of little else. She’d heard stories of people – children from the District, achieving great things with the support of the Capitol. People spoke with wonder and admiration about the adults who had gone to the Justice Building to present their skills, and been swept up into a better life. Indeed, was Cricket Antoinette – now a Gamemaker and of such an important year no less – not Reaped from the District originally herself? A plan brewed inside Ave like a storm, chaotic, unpredictable, but powerful nonetheless – the last of these she could say with confidence.

The square was more electric than usual, more excited than anyone would ever have expected from a day like that. Every child knew that, should they be able to suppress the impulse to shout their name out (and who would?), they were safe for another year. Ave had different plans, and stubborn and determined as she was she never stopped to see the lack of sense in them. Not knowing whether she would have the chance to go home again, her arms were full of her blueprints and designs, her bag clunking in cacophony as the legs of a legion of metal insects, rodents and amphibians locked and unlocked from one another. There was no room for fear in her bright and active mind. She had rejected fear when it came. Though Onyx looked at her with anxiety, surely knowing what she was planning, Ave was only focussed on the Escort on the stage, the one person who she needed to attract the attention of at the write moment.

The wind was surprisingly warm as it picked up her locks of blonde hair and swept them into her eyes, where she hurriedly brushed them away. It was as if nature was trying to send her a message, telling her what she was doing was simply madness, that she’d never get to help anyone this way – only die trying. But nature never guided the heart or the mind of such bright child. The only person she trusted was herself, and she had made up her mind the day that grasshopper had shattered as easily as glass on the floorboards.

Onyx’s eyes grew wider and wider as Ave became more frantic to call out to volunteer. Ave understood she probably wanted to beg and plead, but never would in public, and that was enough to stop Ave becoming distracted. The Escort’s speech seemed longer than normal, but finally it ended, and silence so cold and sharp it was like ice descended on the crowd. Ave broke it without looking back.

”I volunteer!”

Her free hand waved as the other clutched both her bag and her papers close to her chest. The crowd parted without force, everyone horrified but with a certain curiosity about the girl who had seemingly signed her own death notice. Ave knew better. She was going to go to the Capitol, and show her ideas to the Gamemakers, and prove her worth and so her family’s worth. She was going to prove everyone wrong, just like Cricket Antoinette had. She was going to save her mother, and so herself.