a packet of fame

"This says 'Female.'"

"Yep."

"You... were the District Four Male."

"Yeah, that wasn't my idea, either." Wander doesn't know whose idea this was, only that vis registration documents had a new marker at the beginning of the school year and vis argument that differently wrong is not the same as right failed to impress the clerk at the Justice Building that afternoon. In the end, ve let it go without much fuss; the original version was hardly any better, and why bother with one more mistaken piece of boring paper in vis life, with people ve loved and the bright late-summer sun waiting outside the office?

If ve had seen this coming, ve might have fought it a little harder.

This clerk leans back to confer in hushed tones with the coworker at the next desk, who disappears into another room and returns with a second record for them. Wander props an elbow on the counter and vis chin against a fist to watch as they run a finger down the new paper, peering as though the closer they put their face to it the more sense it will make. "This doesn't match."

"Welcome to my life." Wander sighs. "Do you need, like, fingerprints? A blood sample? Those haven't changed."

"Um..." They tap their finger against something on the paper and briefly lock eyes with Wander through the window in the booth before they stand up. "Wait here. I'm getting a Peacekeeper."

Wander slumps over the counter and loses the battle against rolling vis eyes.

---

To tired amusement that Wander tries and mostly fails to bury, they do take both fingerprints and a blood sample. They also pat ver down again, as though ve might have sprouted a weapon out of vis hair while standing in line between checkpoints; Wander finds verself irritated less that they're doing it at all, and more at the way the two Peacekeepers in the side room huddle in a corner and point conspicuously at each other and then to ver, clearly trying to figure out which of them is the correct gender for the task. "I don't care," ve calls over eventually, which only gets the two of them to look at ver for five long, awkward seconds before they go back to what they were doing. It's a relief when they leave—or at least it's a relief until the long, empty minutes in the blank room stretch into something that feels entirely too much like the Vault, except without the company. Wander settles verself against a wall and props ver hands behind vis head as ve hums one sea shanty after another, an attempt to look casual that dissolves immediately when someone finally opens the door again and ve scrambles to vis feet.

No one, apparently, saw fit to update vis mother. As the guard who pulled Wander from the room leads ver down the hall, her voice drifts back to meet them, not shouting but firmly in the difficult client voice that tells everyone around her she would be happy to dismantle the building around them brick by brick if she needed to. "If you can't bring my child to me," she's saying, "take me back to ver—"

A stranger cuts in. "Answer's the same, lady, you're already through the checkpoint. You'll have to wait for—her—?"

"Ver—"

"Look, back off before I declare you a security hazard—"

"Ma!" Wander breaks into a run around the last corner; vis escort grabs for vis shoulder, but not before ve emerges from the hallway to find vis mother with her arms folded coldly. She steps forward as Wander stumbles; torn between mortification and fear of what the Peacekeeper will do if she actually tries to come back through the gate, ve waves her back as the newest clerk, glancing nervously up at the Peacekeeper, scans vis identification one last time.

"What," vis mother says, folding ver into a too-tight hug almost before ve clears the gate, "the hell?"

"Ma," Wander says again, squirming a little until she pulls back. "I'm fine. Let's just go, okay?" Satisfying as it suddenly sounds to let vis mom chew someone out on vis behalf, like ve's eight years old and a teacher said something rude and no one is holding a gun, getting out of here honestly sounds better. They have luggage to retrieve and lodgings to find. Somewhere out there in an entire new District, Temple and Eve and Bette and everyone else are either already waiting or soon to arrive.

The blank walls—even out here, surrounded by the warmth and noise of a new wave of people with freshly-signed documents making their way into District Eight—feel too close.

"Alright," vis mother says, but she keeps a firm arm around vis shoulders as they walk, and Wander stops trying to pull away.



title song is "The Dreadnaught"; real talk, that is entirely because I couldn't find anything that felt like a proper title so I figured I might as well go with a bad nautical pun.

I've been wanting to address the out-of-character D4M --> D4F shift in-character somewhere, but it's proving thematically difficult to work into another post, so! oneshot it is!