Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

This vision gets worse and worse every year. He’s sure of it.

The Capitol has changed to Yoongi. At one point in his life, it had been a foreign place filled with wonder and new things, so many colours that he was sure not all of them had names, his heart racing in his chest with a need and a desire to see more. To see what lay behind golden doors, what lay beyond the train that plucked him from District Three. He had been pushed through crowds of hands desperate to touch him, eyes craning to have one glimpse of the tributes.

It had been a lot more breathtaking then, but scary. Frightening. Such an overload of bright and new stimulus.

Six years later, Yoongi thinks the Capitol is still as frightening as ever.

He has started to blend in a bit more. A Victor of the Games, of course, must always look their best, must always be so desirable for the members of the Capitol. God help any of them have to look at something not aesthetically pleasing for a mere moment, a mere second, who knows what would happen. But he blends in subtly. Gold flecks by the corvers of his eyes, his clothes smarter and more expensive than what he would have been in if he was just a regular citizen of District Three. A nobody. Melted into the crowd and stamped with a wax seal, stating him to be Capitol property.

Aren’t they all?

Little lambs pushed into crates, shipped off to wherever somebody above deems appropriate. Never in control, never able to choose. He believes even the choices he makes may not be his own. Thoughts like those turn darker, darker than what would be accepted here. The Capitol must be perfect. The Capitol must be paradise. The Capitol is the heart of Panem, and thus must represent nothing but the ultimate dream. Where everybody must wish to be.

Yoongi wishes with all his heart that he had never won the Games.

Mentoring leaves a larger strain onto him than he would care to admit. It pulls him until he stretches, limbs like rubber bands, but they don’t snap, nor do they spring back. He stays stretched, forever changed, barely clinging on. Only waiting for that final pull that will truly snap him into pieces. It won’t be long now.

There is so much about the Capitol that scares him. The people themselves are frightening, with their vibrant colours and the way they speak, placing themselves up onto this podium where they can look down on the districts from a safe space. Away from the mess, away from what they deem too beneath them. That whole mentality, that whole mess is something he doesn’t want anything to do with. He’ll sit there and look pretty, but that’s all he’ll do.

He would rather remain in his district anyway, regardless of anything else.

Being a mentor was too draining, took so much emotional turmoil. To bring somebody close to him, to value them, to do everything he can to help them survive, only to have them ripped away from him anyway? It’s… it’s a lot. It’s another pull on the rubber band.

District Three, however, hasn’t been home since he left for the Games.

The Victor’s Village was a stark and empty place, filled with reminders of what Yoongi did to win, to live. Is it even living at this point? If not just… surviving? To barely manage a night without terrors and waking up clutching his chest, more fear and pain washing over his body. Drowning him, suffocating him, all of it. Memories of the people he had to kill during his Games, of the things he had to do to try to survive, and then the guilt that would press and press and press against him like the heaviest weight, trying to push him into the ground, crushing him. The guilt crushes him anyway, it’s not like he has much of a choice of that anyway.

Six years since he won, six years since they told him to be a mentor. Keeps you in the public eye, had been whispered into his ear. More like to keep their eye on him. Yet so much of the fight Min Yoongi had prior is long gone, sapped from his body and absorbed by the Capitol, used against him. And such the cycle goes on.

Tribute is reaped, Yoongi gets attached, tribute dies. Each and every year that passes, over and over and over again. Like a looping record, the same eight counts being repeated and it is slowly driving him crazy.

He thought that maybe taking a leaf out of the other mentors’ books might be good. The distance they had with their tributes, they never cared. Never shed a tear in his sight at least, only heaved a great sigh when the cannon would go off. No sympathy, no compassion, not the same heartache that Yoongi was putting himself through. Their immunity is something he grew jealous of, something he thought he wanted. To not feel like such a failure when he would see his tributes die, when their names and districts would be broadcasted into the sky of the arena. At that point, there was nothing he could have done.

So he thinks about everything he should have done beforehand.

And just like clockwork, each time he can see a point where he could have given better advice, a part where he could have gotten a sponsor to help them, and he would so easily lose himself into these thoughts, so quickly have them surround him until he must succumb to their feelings. Those feelings are awful, but they are his, the one thing in this fucked up world he can clearly call his own.

His house, his clothes, his belongings, his life - all of them belong to the Capitol. All of it belongs to those who deemed him worthy enough to let live.

He hates it. He hates the Capitol. It’s scary.

So scary.

When he is once again called to mentor, called to the thrill and the horror of the Games themselves, he feels the blood drain from his face and a pins-and-needles feeling spread over each limb, right down to his extremities. Fingertips numb, heart thrumming like a mockingjay in his chest, completely trapped. Just like he is. Min Yoongi is a bird in a boney cage, blood sloshing around at his feet, and never quite able to squeeze his body through the space allotted for an escape. Not quite ready, not quite lithe enough. So close.

The Games mean leaving District Three. The Games mean once again going to the Capitol and heaving to surround himself with those who dehumanised him, turned him into some sort of circus attraction instead of anything with any value. Anyone with any value. He is so certain that without this Victor status, he has none. If he had died in his Games, he would have died a regular boy, barely fourteen years of age with knobbly knees and a scratchy voice. Just Yoongi from District Three, not a Career Tribute and not a volunteer.

Simply desired for his sharp eyes and quick-witted tongue, the way his dark hair would frame his features.

He bleached his hair blond the first opportunity he had after the Games, desperate to rid himself of that image and that reputation that they so badly wanted to give him.

To think he is supposed to prepare someone else to have this life, one that he never wanted, makes him feel sick. The nausea swims up to his throat and settles there, choking him slowly, like a knife is held to the soft flesh on his neck. Blade up, pressing until blood beads from his skin.

The summons will lay on his desk, no sound in the room. Its presence is enough to send a chill down his spine, to leave him feeling watching and monitored. Each summons is a command. A reminder to be drilled into the head of each Victor. The Capitol still owns you, he imagines it would say. Don’t forget that.

And he’ll spend days in rapid episodes of anger and upset, spontaneous bouts of screaming and crying, with the same images burnt into his eyesight. Even when he closes his eyes, he sees it. Sees them. Sees every life he took and every life he could have saved; every tribute that has their blood on his hands, directly or not. No matter how many times he scrubs and washes and tries to clean it off, it never goes. Always blood, always dirty and always marred, tainted.

The names and faces of the tributes he should have protected, the names and faces of the tributes he killed himself, and the names and faces of the tributes who he cared for.

All he has to do is get through this Reaping, get through these Games, without losing somebody else again.

He watches them filter in. Yoongi is sitting just left of the stage outside of the Hall of Justice. It had been power washed earlier, pushing off the dirt off the surface and onto the ground beneath - an analogy he finds almost fitting - but it doesn’t settle right, doesn’t make him feel right. The Capitol could care less about the Districts until one of their own has to go to them, has to see the state that their apparent omnibenevolent Capitol leaves them in. The Reaping is some special occasion, though there is nothing special about it at all.

The Reaping sends fear down so many people’s spines. Yoongi is not an exception to this whatsoever. The same video to be played, detailing the so-called Dark Days. Days that happened long before Yoongi was born, long before they could have an emotional effect on him. The only remnants of their time are the videos, are the hushed whispers, of the Games’ existence themselves. The mere mention of rebellion resulting in somebody going missing, plucked out of their life like the prep teams remove blemishes on their skin. Gone without a trace, never to be spoken of. But of course, the Games are a punishment for the Districts. That much has been written in blood on every wall in Panem. He should not be surprised.

Everybody knows this.

As a mentor, as a former Victor, he has no choice but to attend the Reaping; to look into the eyes of kids as they pray to whatever god is listening that their names don’t get drawn, that the voice of Jung Hoseok doesn’t ring out with their names on his tongue, rolling off in that oh-so-perfect Capitol accent. The same accent that only reminds him of when his name had been picked, when he had been marched to the stage without so much as a look toward his family, without so much as a short goodbye before he was plucked from his home and swept off to the Capitol.

He doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t want to look at them. He doesn’t want to look into the eyes of somebody who might have to rely on him to keep them alive. He can’t do it. He knows he can’t, he was the last District Three winner, meaning he has failed each and every time. Five failures. Ten people he has grown close to that have died in his care, under his watch. He won’t make it to six, he won’t let it be twelve, he won’t let his heart get smashed to pieces again and again.

Call him selfish. Maybe he is. Hasn’t he earnt the right to be so by now?

Yoongi remembers when he lined up for his Reaping. When they pricked his finger and read his name back to him, cataloguing him like he was just one in a million. Well, in the eyes of a Peacekeeper, he is. Just one in a million, not important enough to name but to number instead.

Was. In the eyes of a Peacekeeper, he was just one in a million. But even then, while Victors might be loved by the Capitol citizens, they are still District scum in the eyes of those with power.

The haunting sound of their oh-so-loved president sounds out throughout the District, the video played on large screens that can’t really be avoided, displaying the history of their country like it hasn’t been ingrained and carved into their skin for years. There are lines and lines of kids, of teenagers, of eighteen-year-olds and twelve-year-olds and every age in between. Not one of them looks excited, not one of them looks happy, though he would be more surprised if they were. He remembers how he felt. He remembers how he felt like he was being compressed, like the world was pushing down on him and squeezing him into this tiny box. All the air pushed from his lungs.

The video plays in the background, and he does his best to ignore it, does his best to ignore the way Hoseok mouths along with the words like knowing this is something to be proud of, like this is in any way connected to a good thing. It’s poisonous. It’s dark green and drippy and gooey and making him feel nauseous. Sticky. Sticking to everything. Ruining it in the process. Nothing that the Capitol touches stays good forever.

Nothing at all.

The gold flecks that stick to his eyelids feel like they’re beginning to irritate him. They make his eyes itch a little, make him feel uncomfortable. Make them water, and the desire to rub them off in the middle of everybody is so fucking overwhelming that he has to twist his fingers into the material of his trousers, creasing them in his hold. Something that Hoseok won’t be too happy about when he finds out…

Everything has to look good, everything has to be perfect, everything has to be Capitol ready .

The Capitol makes him want to be sick too.

When the video ends, Yoongi feels his eyes beginning to water; he tilts his head up, hoping these fake tears don’t start trickling down his cheeks. The last thing he needs is one of the cameras catching it and suddenly it will be whistled through the Capitol gossip vines with no hesitation. Spreads through like a fungus infecting everything it touches. He tries to blink them away, hoping that if any falls it blends in with the makeup that was dusted on his cheeks by a prep team before the Reaping itself began.

That’s a funny concept to him. While people - kids as young as 11 - were being catalogued like livestock and put into a lottery to be killed, he had people worrying that his cheeks were a little flushed. There’s something barbaric about the way they think, something that is so casually violent, normalised. Like the deaths of those deemed lesser simply because of where they’re born is some sort of trivial matter. Like it’s just entertaining.

Well, he has to admit, to them it probably is. In some sort of sick way.

The concept of sponsors is fucked too. Betting on who will kill and who will live and who will die, parading around that you sent a starving teenager a loaf of bread like that’s something to be proud of.

If he had the courage, if he had the means, he would have called for a boycott of the Games years ago.

The only downside would be the Capitol would take the life they consider theirs anyway - his own.

The Districts are so different from the Capitol. The people go from cool tones of grey and blue to bright colours, enough to be overwhelming. Too much and so different that even the thought of it makes his vision blur, makes the colours and the lights all blend into one. The video stops, the music fading out, the same old footage played that even Hoseok knows the words, even he does too. Though he certainly does not have the desire nor the need to show that off.

“Now to begin,” the accented voice of Hoseok rings out like a bell, sharp and tuned. “Ladies first.”

The circular bowls filled with pieces of paper lay on either side of Hoseok, and in his heeled boots and jacket that drags behind him like some sort of regal robe, he makes his way toward the one on the left; Yoongi almost can’t bear to look. He wants to cover his ears and close his eyes and pretend none of it is happening, pretend he’s somewhere else. Anywhere else but here.

Back in his apartment in Victor’s Village, back in District Three, back surrounded by the things bought with literal blood money but his things, his own, things he chose and things he can control. Nothing reminding him of how he got to be there. Nothing but the title of Victor itself.

A name is called, one that he misses, the loud ringing in his ear muffling the sound and he wasn’t paying much attention anyway. A young girl with bluntly cut brown hair makes her way up the stairs, her eyes wide with fear; Yoongi closes his own. He doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t want to see her look at him with some sort of hope, that maybe he will be able to keep her alive.

He wishes he could do so, he wishes it with everything he has, but he’s not so naive anymore. That innocent ignorance is long gone.

Somebody is sobbing in the crowd. He can’t tell who, but probably a parent, probably a sibling. Probably someone who knows they are about to lose a loved one.

He doesn’t look. He can’t look at Hoseok, he can’t look at the girl tribute, he can’t look at the crowd that are either exhaling because they or their relative wasn’t picked, or the ones still panicking because the other tribute needs to be called.

Halfway through already, he thinks to himself. That’s a positive at least. Only one more name and that stupid fucking saying before he can steal away onto the train to the Capitol, lock himself into his room. A room on a train paid for by the very people that uprooted his life and ruined it, there is always a double-edged sword.

“...Jeon Jeongguk!”

The name itself jolts him from his thoughts, tugging him out of them with no hesitation. Jeon Jeongguk. It means nothing to him at first - of course, why would it? Another name to be added to the list of those killed in the names of quelling a non-existent rebellion. And that’s all it is, all it should be, all this tribute should be to him.

He doesn’t look. He finds no reason to. He hears no sobs this time around, no loud cries and pleas for the Games to not take their child, to take their life away from them. There is nothing but silence, only claps from Hoseok, and each one may as well be a knife in his gut. Twisting and twisting. Only making him feel all the worse. Is it better to keep them nameless or faceless? Or are either choices completely inevitable? Does he even have the choice to remain so willfully ignorant, considering the Games themselves are broadcasted? Shoved in everybody’s faces.

He doesn’t want to look, because he doesn’t want to get attached. How fucked is that?

There is a call for applause, and it’s speckled throughout the crowd, a few people no doubt going it out of pity more than actual celebration. Even as a District closer to the Capitol, the residents of District Three still don’t want to send their children off the Games. It is no honour to them, not like the Districts that prepare their children for it.

Honestly, in theory… to be prepared for your name to be Reaped is not a bad thing. It gives them a fighting chance, a potential to survive. But to send them off purposefully just feels like sending a lamb to slaughter.

A hand is pressed against the small of his back, the shape felt through the tighter material of his shirt, and he shivers. It’s just to guide him, just to indicate that he has to move onto the train now. Suitcases already loaded, ready for him to go and hide, to pretend this isn’t happening. It’s the same thing every year.

He turns away, not looking at the crowd, not looking at the faces of the tributes. He’ll be forced with them soon enough, he doesn’t want to have to spend longer with them than he has to. Is that wrong?

All he has to do is board the train. He has nobody to say goodbye to, he’s not one of the tributes, so while they are pushed into rooms to bid farewell to their families, he goes up to Hoseok, and he tries to ignore the way the other man grins at him as they walk together. It’s with a closer look that he notices all of the tiny sewn-in feathers that adorn his coat, brushing against the ground as they both go towards the train. His heels click against the floor, his footsteps oddly softened by the dirt that has seeped into the pavement beneath them. A pathway that has been walked on for years and years before, by tributes and mentors and representatives alike. Peacekeepers, prep teams, camera crews, officials from the Capitol. All treading and wearing away at what would have once been a cobbled street.

It looks nothing like that anymore.

“I truly think we have a chance of winning this year,” Hoseok states, excitedly with a bounce in his step. Yoongi notes that he says that every year.

“We’ll see,” Yoongi responds though, not quite wanting to burst his bubble Hoseok is not a bad man, is not cruel like his counterparts from other Districts, the ones that find a certain joy in seeing the fear in people’s eyes. He had been kind to Yoongi since his appointment at this ‘post’, he has no reason to be nasty to him.

“I might make a bet,” he gives a nod to a Peacekeeper as the doors to the train open; it’s a sleek machine, shaped like a bullet and the colour of a chrome silver, sparkling in the sun. Both remarkably out of place in District Three, and blending in almost perfectly. The technology for the shuttles were not from District Three, but District Six instead. “How about you?”

Yoongi would rather give his blood money to the hundreds starving in District Three, but he knows that would be frowned upon. Not suitable. “Maybe.” He won’t.

When Hoseok steps through the open doors - onto solid wood flooring that looks so wrong with the stone in District Three - Yoongi finds himself hesitating for the first time. The first pause in his plan. Because while he wants nothing to do with the Games themselves, wants to hide on this train, it’s still… it’s still the beginning to another end. Another part of his soul being ripped away. He idly wonders just how much he has left at this point. His name is called, and he turns back to Hoseok, who beams at him, completely unaware of the thoughts going round and round in Yoongi’s head, like they’re stuck on a roundabout that will never slow down, only speed up.

What he would do for it to just stop.

The trains make him feel a little nauseous, a running theme with anything associated with the Games, it seems. They are almost too luxurious. Plush seating and smooth wooden tables, chandeliers - and who needs a chandelier on a train for crying out loud - and more food and spirits than any of them need. This is probably the one thing he’s grateful they’re not far from their destination, though once again it just reminds him of the omnipresent eye.

The eyes that don’t stop seeing.

He follows Hoseok, exhaling as they walk into the dining room, velvet couches off to the left and a bar to the right. If this had been his first year, he notes, he would be behind the bar already, searching for a bottle of white liquor to drown his thoughts as he would remember when he first stepped onto this train.

He had almost passed out. Yeah, that didn’t give his mentor a lot of faith.

All shaky legs and knees knocking together, the colour draining from his face and his hands entirely numb. Images and pictures and rewinds of the last Games and the deaths he watched then except… except it was him being killed, him doing the killing. Even with no choice, it was just not something he ever pictured himself being able to do. His name had only ever been Reaped in his nightmares, so when it happened, it had been more a shock to his system than anything else.

He knows how the tributes are feeling right now. If anything, that should make him feel more compassion toward them, want to help them all the more. Comfort them in the way that he should have been.

Min Yoongi wants to be selfish. He wants them to live, of course, but he’s not sure he wants to risk himself for it to happen.

God, even thinking that makes him feel like shit.

“Right, drink, Yoongi?” Hoseok asks, and Yoongi shakes his head, ready to leave but he finds himself sinking into a chair instead. The rounded edge is something he thought would have been digging into his back, but it’s smooth and comfortable, slides against his shirt. Which is irritating. He’s looking for more and more excuses to hate his situation, perhaps this is just reaching for anything at this point… “Suit yourself.”

He would have happily drunk himself into a stupor, drowned his sorrows like it was the daily deal, but he doesn’t want to handle the memories that come with the drink. He doesn’t forget. If anything, they become more vivid, the alcohol itself washing away whatever defenses he has put around those memories. Keeping them locked away is the only way he knows how to keep his mind. If they were loose, who knows what would happen.

Let’s just say that Min Yoongi has not dealt with things for a long time.

“Welcome!” Hoseok greets oh-so-cheerily, waving a bottle of wine in their direction, over Yoongi’s back. He could leave right now, just walk to the next carriage and hide out in the bathroom until he could steal away into his room. The train starts forward mere seconds as the doors shut behind them, leaving behind their old lives and their families and Peacekeepers, everything they’ve never known. It starts slowly, picking up speed in minutes until they power through with that two-hundred mile-per-hour average. Then, it feels like they’re flying.

They must feel awkward, judging by the fact they haven’t exactly rushed to join him; Yoongi bites on the pad of his thumb, elbow resting on the arm of the chair, gaze out of the window as he waits for the train to get started.

There is so much food here, and District Three has more factories than land for farming, space for supplies to keep them going. They are meant to be machines, living in such a built up space that sometimes, Yoongi thinks the sky is a permanent shade of grey. No clouds, all smoke from the factories, and stars are a thing he long thought were myths. Myths until he got to the Capitol and saw what they got to see everyday.

But of course, who cares what the Districts live like as long as the Capitol citizens can see a pretty sky every night.

He doesn’t look, but he hears their footsteps, can hear the way their breath shakes and trembles, it’s not something he can ignore. Not even if he wanted to. Not even if he tried.

“Jeongguk, right?” Hoseok is smiling, beaming with that sunshine grin. The shape of a heart, Yoongi notes, just as he knows many Capitol citizens would have had their appearance altered for a smile like his. In that regard, Hoseok is lucky.

To think appearance is something that matters so much, Yoongi can’t find himself surprised. After all, appearances kept him alive in the Games, appearances got him sponsors. Appearances are more important than he would like.

“Yes, sir,” a voice chimes out from right behind him, one that he doesn’t recognise. One of the tributes.

“Sit, sit,” Hoseok beckons them down to join Yoongi at the little table, stacks of pretty cakes and glasses of different coloured drinks surrounding them. So much different to what they are used to, surely. “It’s so nice that you both get to experience and enjoy this, even if it is for a little while.”

Standard script. Yoongi has heard this seven times now. Seven.

The male tribute - Jeon Jeongguk - sits down next to him. A little stiff in his chair, feeling out of place, maybe. Yoongi only looks through the corners of his eyes, though he sees the way his fingers press into the indents on the arm of the chair, memorising the patterns underneath his touch. Brief, momentary, filled with anxiety perhaps. “How does this… work?”

A valid question, Yoongi wants to scoff, and he adjusts the way he sits. The female tribute sits opposite Jeongguk, and Hoseok next to her. He still doesn’t look to his side, not wanting to make eye contact, though ever-so fixated on those hands as they fidget. He should go. He should just walk out and go.

Hoseok is looking through his notes, a slim folder with the cap of a pen kept between his teeth as he looks through, nodding and humming to himself as he does so. “Right, ok,” he mumbles, taking the cap into his fingers. “We’ll be at the Capitol tomorrow evening, we have a lot to squeeze into your schedules.” He looks up and grins at them. “How are you liking things so far?”

Silence settles between the four of them, and Yoongi clears his throat, looking out the window. Each time he gets on this train, it feels worse. But this time, he makes no move to befriend the tributes, to act like a mentor. This time, he is nothing but a presence, old and weary and exhausted at the age of twenty, not wanting to engage any further in this game. In the Games. At all.

Jeongguk must offer a smile or something, because Hoseok suddenly relaxes. “It’s… a lot.”

“Of course,” Hoseok agrees, putting his papers down. They crease a little on the table; too many things on it for them to lay nicely. Candles and flowers and plates and cutlery and glasses and napkins, all too much, none of it necessary at this moment in time, most of it unnecessary completely. Things deemed appropriate for manners, yet there are people all through Panem starving to death. He hates it. “You’ll get used to it though. After all, the next week or so is all about celebrating you.”

Yoongi frowns. “And preparing them for the Games, Hoseok.”

He interjects, perhaps sounding a little colder and a little meaner than he really intended, but that’s the issue with it. That’s the problem. Capitol citizens never quite think beyond the entertainment, beyond what they are given. Teenagers surrender their lives and all they want is a good show.

The Games aren’t to celebrate. And these days are meant to help them, prepare them, teach them how to survive.

“Isn’t that your job?” Jeongguk asks, and Yoongi’s heart drops to his stomach, twists and stretches until he feels it beating, beating, faster and faster and faster each time.

It is his job, yes.

Jeongguk clocks on faster than he expected, and he finally breaks away from his resolve. By looking at the tributes, by looking at Jeongguk, he feels like he’s surrendering, laying his heart down in an obvious trap only to act surprised when it snaps shut and hurts. He would love to believe that the boy next to him would be capable of winning, but he’s not sure he’s willing to lie to himself just that much.

But he is so much… more than he expected.

He has a slim frame, with a tiny waist that is simply drowning in fabric, but Yoongi can tell even from sitting down that Jeongguk is taller than he is, with dark curly hair that reaches his jaw, the top half tied up in a small ponytail to no doubt keep his hair off his face. A tanned face, one that has been kissed by the sun, which in itself is so rare and so prized in their District. And handsome too. A small freckle underneath full lips and the hint of a smile lingers on them, a fake one, one given to Hoseok to placate him and comfort him. Yoongi wonders if he will keep up this facade, or if it will crumble the moment he is in private. Then who will comfort Jeongguk? Who will tell him everything is going to be ok?

There aren’t enough words to explain how Yoongi feels the minute he looks in those big brown eyes. There aren’t any words good enough.

Yoongi nods after a while, “I’m your mentor. My name is-”

“Min Yoongi.” Jeongguk interrupts with a slight wince. Maybe he didn’t mean to. “You won the Games six years ago.”

Six years ago. He nods again, confirming it as fact. Six years ago, his seventh time on this train, he’s so tired of this. Eight, nine, six, five, four. Too many numbers sometimes, and they run around his head, trying to make him dizzy. Trying to make him fall apart, trick him into allowing his heart to open, peeling back whatever keeps him safe. There is no safety here, he knows this year will end up just like the last few. He just wishes he could trick himself. That would be a whole lot easier.

“...are you going to help us?” Jeongguk asks, ducking his head a little, and Yoongi can’t really say no, can he? He can’t look him in the eyes and tell him that he’s not going to lift a finger to try and help him survive in these Games. Is he going to help them?

Perhaps the silence is staggering, perhaps it is suffocating, perhaps it is too much for them to make sense of. Yoongi could rattle off poetic words and explain that there is nothing to be done to save them or he could be brutally honest, and say that he simply does not want to subject himself to whatever emotions he will surely feel at the end of it all. Unavoidable, maybe, but he would still like to try his best.

“Yeah,” he answers after a while, after too long. “I’m your mentor. It’s my job.”

It’s his job.

Jeongguk visibly relaxes in his seat. His body sinks, like it’s the first time he’s allowed himself some respite that morning. Since the moment his name was called, he’s been tense; wound up like a spring just ready to pop, ready to explode. The tightness in his shoulders seeps away, his breathing going slow and deep, not so shallow or as worried as before.

That anxiety, that concern, and that worry from before will still be there. Flooding his system, telling him that the battle hasn’t been won quite yet.

If it will be won at all.

“You two can help yourselves,” Hoseok points out, gesturing to the food and drink. Both tributes look a little confused by it all, and Yoongi understands that. It’s a lot. It’s wasteful. There’s enough food to feed an army, to feed a whole district. Yet, they are only four. The girl hesitantly reaches for a glass, reaches for a jug of peach-coloured liquid and pours it slowly with shaky hands. Only a little bit, just to see if she will like it. “Jeongguk?”

“I’m alright, thank you,” though Yoongi is right next to him, and he can hear the way his stomach grumbles. He’s hungry, so clearly hungry, and while he is not so skinny he can see the bones of his chest through his loose white shirt - moreso off-white - nor are his cheeks so hollow that the imprints of his teeth are visible either. He is slim, but so clearly strong, the way his hands flex and twist only show to Yoongi that maybe he can hold his own, maybe those hands and forearms give him some sort of fighting chance.

He can hope, at least. But the Career tributes will no doubt be ten times bigger, ten times stronger, and ten times meaner.

He doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t know what to do. He just… sits there, watching the trees and the scenery outside of the train blur together into one image. Messy and incoherent and disorentating. But unsurprising.

He should go now.

The lull in conversation is practically an open door waiting for him to run through. Running away is not something that he hasn’t thought of before. It has certainly been a plan, most certainly was one when he was with him. It would have been easy to just run from District Three, straight away into the unknown, he would have preferred it.

It wasn’t plausible. You can’t run from the Capitol. They’ll just drag you back, kicking and screaming, and rip away whatever it is that makes you feel good about your life. Yoongi didn’t have a chance to run before he was dragged right back into the snake’s nest.

He presses the flat of his shoes against the ground, ready to push himself up onto his feet. All he has to do is excuse himself. Jeongguk keeps staring, and he could leave under the guise of needing to lie down, of feeling nauseous, of needing to come up with some sort of plan to keep the two of them alive. An easy lie, a simple lie, but not a white one. It will have repercussions, it will have consequences. They’ll find out and maybe then it’s just more guilt to be layered onto his shoulders. More and more and more again.

“Sir-” Jeongguk starts.

But Yoongi cuts him off. “You can just call me hyung, or Yoongi.” It feels foreign to say those words, to invite Jeongguk into his bubble, but the damage is done. He knows it will get worse, that the aftermath will make his heart crack and splitter and break. Simply break. Hyung is crossing a barrier, hyung is comfortable, hyung feels like it should be shared between friends underneath the night sky, hands red from the cold and little shivers wracking their frames, a shared glance at most. Hyung has never been for tributes, not really.

“Hyung,” Jeongguk corrects himself, speaking slowly, speaking quietly. He’s about to speak, about to ask something else when Yoongi stands up instead. Like he’s breaking out of the mould the four of them are being pressed into, cracking through the glass that is pushed down onto them. But Jeongguk looks like it’s potentially the end of the world, for his now hyung to leave the table, leave the train car. “Where are you going?”

“I get motion sickness,” Yoongi blurts out this bullshit excuse, and Hoseok frowns a little, tilting his head. “I’m going to go and lie down.”

“You didn’t get motion sickness last year,” Hoseok comments idly, ruining that excuse that he had figured was perfect at the time. But of course, Hoseok wouldn’t have meant it like that, he wouldn’t have done it on purpose. Just a simple comment made without no malice but it still puts him in a bad position. “Did something happen?”

“I just tried to, uh,” he stammers. “I pushed through it last year, maybe it’s worse this time because of something I ate…” The backtrack is obvious, blaringly obvious through his words. He can’t even convince himself, let alone any of the other three. “Sorry.”

He turns on his heel without a second thought, turning away from them entirely. His chair is left untucked from the table, no further words shared between the four of them as he makes his way out of the dining car, walking as quickly as he can. Only one day until the Capitol, one sleep until all of this becomes unavoidable. Let him have this last moment of peace.

Before everything is blown open, anyway.

The door shuts behind him, clicking into place as it slides closed, and he exhales. A deep, deep sigh that feels like it comes from the pit of his belly, the tightness of his chest. It’s like a brief moment of reprieve, a moment of respite and a second to breathe. To just… remember to keep his head. He needs to keep himself together, he can’t let this year break him, not after everything he’s been through. Even if being cold and disconnected is the way to go.

The train is the same as it is every year, the same atmosphere though with minor changings. Pictures swapped out, carpet relaid, the furniture from last year no doubt burnt for fun and replaced with carbon copies, the wood from District Seven smoothed and worked and sent to the Capitol. The Districts sparsely get the fruits of their labours, all of it sent to their ‘beating heart’ Capitol, the place that does no work but gets all the glory.

The Districts are so different from the Capitol that it’s almost like they are two separate worlds.

Even if he had to compare, he would… prefer the District. District Three but no Peacekeepers, no work quotas, no factories for miles and people walking home with their hands wrapped in bandages, joints throbbing and shaking from using machinery. Backs curved and stiff, brows furrowed from working all day, doomed to try their best to fulfil quota after quota after quota, all for the Capitol, all for the people who sit on their behinds and just revel in their riches, laughing at the very things that cause the citizens of the Districts so much fear.

Like the Games themselves.

The train goes so fast that walking isn’t an issue, and he passes through another car before he reaches where they sleep. His own room is next to Hoseok’s, his one suitcase already laid right in the middle of his bed. There’s no point in even opening it until they get to the Capitol, the wardrobes here are stuffed full with clothes like the Victors cannot be trusted to have decent enough clothes to blend in. Pointless.

All he wants is to sink onto the mattress and pretend that none of this is happening, that he’s back home in District Three, the sheets pulled over his head and no light creeping in through the gaps in the curtains, the blinds beneath them too. Nothing but pure darkness, hiding, able to hide from the memories of his own Games. Like he can get away from them.

Wordlessly, he pulls back the sheets to this bed, moving his suitcase down to the floor. Yoongi doesn’t want to deal with the next few days. If he could skip it all, he would. Instead, it seems he must be content with sleeping away as much of the time as he can. After shrugging off his jacket, allowing it to drop onto the floor and crease up, he crawls into the bed, tugging one of the pillows down underneath with him, and the sheets are over his head.

If somebody was to walk in, they would see just a hidden form in the sheets, round and small, the lights down. Yoongi curls up tight, as tiny as he can muster, his knees pressed against his chest and he squeezes his eyes shut. Being like this is safe. Nobody can see him, he blends perfectly into the room like part of the furniture itself. Concealed, out of danger, helps him feel like he can sleep. And with sleep comes respite, comes a time he can relax.

Even as he closes his eyes, he imagines tributes coming at him with knives in their hands, an arrow flying past his head, the eyes of his ally as they die in his arms, and… and that very distinct moment that Min Yoongi went from tribute to Victor.

And he curls tighter, squeezes his eyes shut like he’s wishing the memories away. Oh, what he would do to have his memory wiped, to be given a whole new identity, to lose literally everything he has now because it would hurt so much less. It would be so much less scary. Everything is scary, there is not a moment he is not afraid. Always afraid.

Part of him wonders if death was going to greet him when he woke up. He imagines death to be this spindly creature, with shadows shaped like a cloak rolling off its frame, a skeletal hand reached forward to kindly beckon him forward. He images death as a respite from this living hell, a sweet release from the tightness around his heart. That squeezes, and squeezes, trying to squeeze the very life out of him. Maybe that would be better. Maybe that would be easier. To just… not feel it anymore.

Sometimes, the easier way out is not something he can readily engage in.

Yoongi pulls himself from his cocoon of blankets, limbs feeling stiff, not wanting to think about how long he slept. The small clock on the bedside table tells him it’s early, so early that they will still have a short while before they reach their destination, and enough time for him to get some food into his system. Something simple before plates of rich desserts and sickly sweets are shoved under his nose. Surely enough to make him gag, to make his stomach churn. District Three food is simple, little bitesize squares of bread, food with spices but not too much sugar. Everything the Capitol has is covered in the stuff, like they can’t handle it if it’s not drenched in it.

He rolls his shoulders back, reaching with half-open eyes are the remote nearby that opens the windows for him. The curtains pull back automatically, the blinds open, the room is flooded with the early morning light. It’s cool, the sky a cold tone of blue with hints of pink and orange just beginning to bleed into the sky. A sight he cannot see in District Three, the smoke from the factories clogging up the air until it suffocates them, it suffocates the District, it suffocates Min Yoongi.

Slippers on his feet and sleep weighing down on him, he already knows that food awaits him in the dining car. He can just pray that none of the tributes are awake. He can handle Hoseok - even though that cheery disposition in the morning can really sap his energy away - but he’s not sure he would really be able to provide any decent advice at this time in the morning, willing to do so or not.

The doors open a little too quickly for his taste, and he runs a hand through his hair, trying to tame the bedhead that he managed to give himself. Jacket still discarded on the floor, Yoongi shivers a little, the sleeves of his shirt resting just above his elbows and so not quite giving him the warmth that he needed. It doesn’t matter. Capitol cars mean coffee, good coffee, and that will warm him up quick enough.

The second opens, and there is nobody nearby, not one single person. The chandeliers shake and clink together as the train moves, and Yoongi stretches his arms above his head, pleased for a quiet morning breakfast by himself.

When he first arrived on the train, when he had been shaking and more nervous than anything else, he thought the food arrived by magic. Imagine. He had been so out of it, so hyped up on fire and all of that, unable to really focus on anything else other than the food he had been presented with. He wondered about taking it home, taking some buns back to his mother, some of the desserts for his brother, maybe some of the liquor too, but even he knew back then that stealing would have had him disqualified from the games and his tongue ripped out, never allowed to see his family again. An Avox, a silent servant. Trapped in the one palace he doesn’t want to be.

Yoongi knows better now. He knows where it comes from, he knows it’s not for free, he knows somebody is working until their back breaks for this, which makes it taste… bitter. The extravagance, the detail, it all looks wrong in his eyes. Just wrong in so many ways. He avoids the typical food that Capitol citizens would reach for, instead electing to pluck two tangerines out of the large, glass fruit bowl sitting down at the table, and carefully peeling them.

Citrus occasionally sprays from the fruit onto his fingers, and he lifts them to his mouth, nose creasing at the slight sour taste, but he prefers it. Prefers to have his face twist with the taste instead of feeling like he has just licked a bag of sugar, all the tiny granules sticking to his tongue.

Tangerines are sweet, and not too sweet. Yoongi reclines in his chair, closing his eyes, and enjoying this peace and quiet before they are thrown into the chaos that is the Capitol itself.

“Hyung.”

The door opens and of course, it’s Jeongguk. Stood there in the same clothes he was Reaped in yesterday, though a little creased, like he had slept so well and been so tired that he had just passed out in his day clothes. Yoongi tenses, a piece of tangerine halfway to his mouth when he just stops. Just stops. Like he has been frozen from the inside out and there is nothing else he can really do for a moment.

Nothing, except greet him.

“Good morning, Jeongguk.” He replies quietly, offering a muted smile. Like that should be enough for him. “How did you sleep?”

The younger man walks toward him, scuffling his feet against the carpeted floor of the train, the chandelier above them swinging slightly as they turn a corner. Outside of the windows are just trees, just trees and fields with the sky lightening up the space around them so slowly as time goes on. He looks at the table of food, looking almost hesitantly, like he’s not sure if he’s able to help himself. When Yoongi indicates that he can, he nods, slowly reaching for fruit too.

At least they have that much in common.

Jeongguk brings a small bowl of strawberries to the table, and sits down, slumping into the chair and fidgeting. He sits opposite Yoongi, elbows resting on the arm of the chair, still holding the bowl. Holding it so close to him, almost like he’s afraid it will get taken away from him.

He feels… a little bit awkward. Yoongi doesn’t know where to look, doesn’t know how to start off this conversation. His eyes keep getting drawn to the mole underneath Jeongguk’s bottom lip, unwillingly almost. He can’t help but look and stare and fidget. He fidgets too, twisting a piece of tangerine peel between his fingers.

“You know, it’s lucky if you get the peel off in one go,” Jeongguk speaks quietly, hesitantly perhaps. “I practiced so much when I would get tangerines as a kid, it would take me like ten minutes just to peel one.”

He’s almost grateful for the small talk. It’s enough to fill the room, gives them enough air to breathe, and that’s all he can really hope for at this point. Yoongi nods, still smiling. “Yeah, my father told me the same thing.”

Jeongguk visibly brightens, pleased at the fact Yoongi has walked away or shut down the conversation immediately. Like a weight has been lifted from his chest and he can breathe for the first time in ages. A slow exhale, a little shaky at the end, and his left foot bounces, the heel of his socks against the carpet. He must have so many questions, and Yoongi must seem to have all of the answers. He’s just not quite sure where to begin.

“...I watched your Games,” blurts out instead, and Yoongi feels his blood run cold. “Of course, we don’t know what our Arena will be like, but-”

“You almost sound excited,” Yoongi grumbles, perhaps a little too loudly as it stops Jeongguk’s words right in their tracks. “Are you?”

That silence returns for a moment, Jeongguk mulling the question over. It should be an easy answer, and the fact it’s not an easy answer only makes Yoongi feel worse. The citrus on his tongue turns even more sour, and he needs to cough, the taste choking him.

“Hyung, I’m eighteen,” Jeongguk mumbles, picking up a strawberry from the bowl and bringing it to his lips. “This was my last year. I almost got out of it all.”

That’s true. The year you turn eighteen is your last year, Jeongguk wouldn’t have had his name in the bowl next year, he would have gotten away with all of this. He… he wonders just how much worse that makes things. To know how close he was to escape only to be dragged in by his hair and laughed at, taunted, used as a Capitol prize to show and then slaughter. It’s not fair.

Wordlessly, Yoongi holds out a tangerine, and Jeongguk - with strawberry juice clinging to his lips - takes it with a sad smile and a slight bow of his head. And just like that, guilt is ready to rip Min Yoongi into ribbons.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” he answers after a while, and when he looks up, Jeongguk has perfectly peeled the tangerine in one go.

Jeongguk shrugs his shoulders a little too nonchalantly. “Everybody just seems to be congratulating me,” another shrug, shaking his head this time too. “Peacekeepers when I left, Hoseok-hyung.”

Yoongi quirks a brow. “He let you say hyung already? That was fast.”

“He only did because you did,” Jeongguk laughs a little, his nose scrunching as he does so through the chewing of a piece of fruit. “He said because you’re a team.”

“We are a team,” the words feel almost foreign on his tongue, and he swallows them, trying his best to ignore the way they taste. “We’re here to help either of you win.”

“I will be winning, hyung,” Jeongguk reclines in his seat, squaring his shoulders back, and looking a whole new type of determined that Yoongi has not seen in him yet. “I’ll win the Games.”

“You sound very certain of yourself,” Yoongi replies. “Don’t let that certainty turn into cockiness or arrogance. Because then you won’t win.”

Likely not the answer he was looking for, but Jeongguk clenches his jaw, surrenders with a nod, and secretly pleased that Yoongi is seemingly giving him advice without necessarily knowing it. He could push, he could beg, but he instead wants to see just how much his hyung is willing to help him of his own accord. No outside influence, just what he wants when he wants to do it.

“So, I act humble?”

Yoongi shakes his head. “You act yourself. You need people to like you, and the best way to do that is to be genuine,” he pauses, thinking for a moment. “The Capitol is all dress-up and make-believe, right?”

“Right.”

“But they can tell if you’re lying.”

Capitol citizens are fake, pretty much. Not just in their appearance, but their personalities. Adapted and changed to fit with the trend, lying about how they really are as long as whoever they pretend to be makes them popular. Twisting their principles, lying and lying and lying. The Capitol is all one big lie, Yoongi has been there to see it. The personality shines through the hair and the makeup and the clothes - even he engages in that trick, the glitter from yesterday now halfway down his cheeks - and that’s what he needs to help Jeongguk work on.

The survival skills, the fighting skills, he can’t do shit with that yet. Not until the training center, not until he sees exactly what Jeongguk is capable of.

“Be truthful,” Jeongguk repeats, like he’s committing that to memory. “You think I could get sponsors?”

Yoongi nods, taking another piece of tangerine between his lips. “Easily, but that’s the goal. More sponsors mean more things I can send you, which means a higher chance of you living through the less combative causes of death.” he speaks like he’s reading off a script, like whatever he’s saying is pre-scripted. Built into his system and released at the push of a button.

“Like… not getting killed by another tribute?”

“Exactly,” Yoongi supplies, gathering up the tangerine peel and keeping it in a small pile in front of him. “Getting killed by another tribute, yes, it’s the majority of ways you’ll die. But there are other causes, ones that are preventable.” He could rattle them off, he could infodump everything onto Jeongguk right now and say that’s that. Job done, sufficiently mentored, only to then lock himself into the closest bedroom and hide until the final cannon sounds. That’s it.

Jeongguk, however, maybe seems to know this, seems to be able to read into it. Maybe that’s why he fidgets a little, maybe that’s why he wants to hold Yoongi into the conversation. To keep him there, whether it’s for the information or the company or the brief comfort he may bring if he strings the right words together. All it takes is the right combination, the correct answer, and that’s all.

“What’s it like,” Jeongguk breathes after a moment. “In the Arena? I mean… how does it feel?”

Oh, god, what a question that he never wanted to answer. To go back and revisit all of those emotions if enough to make his stomach twist, coil and hurt, just hurt, just fucking hurt. He exhales, and it’s shaky, and he’s anxious. He’s nervous. He doesn’t know how to explain it, he’s not sure he even waits to. It’s like opening Pandora’s Box, cracking it open and allowing all of that negativity out.

“It’s more than I think I can explain.”

That’s probably not the answer that Jeongguk was hoping for, not the answer that he wanted, but Yoongi feels his fingers tremble, his hands begin to shake. He can’t help it. It’s like pure fear is being shot through his body, thrumming through his limbs and pulsing, pulsing, his heart so loud in his chest that he can feel it in his throat. Thinking, and thinking, and not quite over it once again, he can’t find himself getting over what happened, he’s not sure if it’s possible and he’s not sure if he’s able to. The Games wove themselves into his DNA, sticking to the fibres and the very things that make him who he is. An integral part of his identity now, that’s it. Always a Victor.

Yoongi brings his thumb to his lips, and bites down on the skin. Just a little bit. “I don’t think I can, right now.” He answers. There is a pause before he runs that hand over his face, sighing as he does so. “Right now, I’ll… figure out the words or something, I want to help you.”

And just like that, he is digging himself into a hole and getting himself attached to somebody he just knows he’s going to lose.

It’s Hoseok that saves him from having to delve further, that saves Jeongguk from having to ask another question, and the conversation dies out simply. The third member of their “team”, so to speak, has already touched up his makeup and looks more like he’s ready for the Capitol than any of the other two. Fixed into his system to always dress up, always look the best, ready to represent the apparent beating heart of the people. Yes, Jung Hoseok is a Capitol citizen through and through, though certainly without any of the malice. None of that malicious intent.

“Good morning, everyone!” Yoongi has always been envious of his energy in the mornings - while he can be awake and functioning, there is just something different about the way he manages to hold himself, to act, to respond to the various stimulus that occurs - and he offers the District representative a wave. “How did you sleep, Jeongguk?”

The tribute smiles a little, if only to be polite, because Jeongguk strikes him as the type to always do so. To feign politeness, to charm the people around him, he knows for a fact sponsors will be queueing around the block to send him anything they can, and the best thing is they haven’t really worked together yet. There is still the parade, training, the evaluations, the interviews-- all so much to get ready in the next week and a half.

Eleven days. Eleven days to get everything sorted, eleven days to get both tributes ready, eleven days will feel like forever but it’s no time, no time at all. Nothing compared to what they need.

“I slept well, thank you.”

“Good,” Hoseok chirrups, pouring himself a cup of coffee; he wordlessly asks Yoongi if he wants one, over three years together meaning they know each other pretty well by this point. “You’re going to need it. You have a lot to prepare for, and then the Games themselves, you’re going to need a lot of rest.”

There is barely a moment’s reprieve, only a second before Jeongguk is gasping, immediately attracting Yoongi’s attention. When he looks up at him, the tribute is already out of his seat and moving to the window, unable to look away at the sight that is presented to him. Of course, the reaction is justified, this would be Jeongguk’s first time seeing the beauty of the Capitol.

Buildings surrounded by water, the sunlight catching off the subtle waves, the waves rippling against the ports. In the middle is the Capitol’s own Hall of Justice, barely touched and sparsely used. Capitol citizens are too good for the punishments the Peacekeepers inflict on the District citizens, the acts themselves publicized if only to show how much better a life they have when compared.

But everything sparkles, everything is shining, and Jeongguk himself couldn’t begin to think what every building could be used for. Who needs this space? Who needs some extravagance? It’s all just a bit too much.

The image itself must be… breathtaking. He knows that much, he knows how he was almost starstruck at the sight of it when he first arrived. Now he can’t wait to look away, preferring to map the lines and details in the tangerine peel in front of him, his heart thumping so loudly that he feels like he’s dying. Again and again, over and over, no respite, no break, always ripped from his life just as he starts to relax, starts to get comfortable, starts to heal. Pulled back on by the scruff of his neck, locked back onto a train that never ends. The same train, the same route, the same daunting Capitol.

Don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick.

Maybe all the citrus is making his stomach feel upset, maybe the makeup he didn’t wash off his face is making his eyes sting, he’s not sure what is making him panic so much, but the moment they enter a tunnel, it’s like he can breathe again. Deep, slow breaths, like he was yanked out of water that was trying to drown him. The same water that surrounds the Capitol, that keeps them safe and separate from the Districts.

Only connected by the train.

“It’s beautiful,” Jeongguk whispers, barely audible, but the sound itself hits Yoongi’s ears like a crashing wave. And he feels like wads of tissue has been stuffed into them, blocking out every other sound. Muted. “I never thought it would look like this.”

The closest they get, the people in the Districts, are the images shown to them on projectors and screens. What the Capitol wants them to see.

“It really is, isn’t it?” Hoseok beams, placing Yoongi’s coffee cup on the table before he sits down next to him, gently blowing on the steaming liquid. Even from here, Yoongi can see how it’s too sweet for his own liking. “You’ll get to see it all close up, don’t stop looking.”

Yoongi feels it before he can see it, the way the train is slowing down as they in no doubt reach the end of the tunnel. Right on cue, light floods the space and there is easily a few hundred people staring, craning with their bright makeup and outrageous outfits, such a stark contrast to Jeongguk’s own appearance. He feels like they’ve just walked into the lion’s den, the snake pit, whatever is ready to devour him first. Swallowed whole. Consumed like they are nothing but characters in a television show.

Well, to the Capitol, it is.

The female tribute walks into the dining car as Jeongguk gives a few shy waves to the people screaming names and straining to get one look, one simple glance of the District Three tributes in person. They are all exposed, laid out like specimens to be examined, poked and prodded like they’re not even human.

Yoongi just slowly picks up his cup of coffee, and takes a sip, staring at the tangerine peel once again.

Handing the tributes over to the prep teams was always something that felt weird to him, if only because of his own memories. He recalls certain details and instances, things that occurred that made him uncomfortable, and that’s not even going into the concept itself.

Cleaning them, washing them, treating them like filthy little things that aren’t quite worthy of the Capitol’s attention until they have been treated … is he weird for not liking that?

Six years ago, they had trimmed his hair so his bangs weren’t in his eyes, removed so much body hair that it left his skin feeling red and raw and stinging, and then mocked him. Picked apart his features, only brought so much insecurity in his system that it still lingers. Perhaps that is why the Capitol citizens rely so much on modifications, on makeup and clothes and changing the way they look, to adjust themselves until they are deemed perfect but those all around them.

He wants to pull his hair out and scrub his face clean, but he would only stick out like a sore thumb, and make him feel all the worse. Yoongi doesn’t want to feel like anymore of a stranger, an imposter in this place. He can tolerate the way this makes him feel, even if it is just for now.

The hotel built for the tributes and their mentors is too luxurious for it to be normal, far too astounding to be regular. Even all these years later, he still thinks it a massive waste of money, not that his opinion is in any way important. After all, while he is a Victor, he still belongs to the Capitol itself. And they will surely spare no expense on the Games. It’s the biggest event of the year, it’s something that the citizens of Panem practically spend all their time looking forward to… to deliver a lacklustre performance would only make things worse.

As if things couldn’t get any worse.

The lobby is filled to the brim with Victors from other Districts, all of them pushed together and almost forced to talk, all of them bonded together over their shared experience, even if it was surely something so firmly negative. The only good part of the Games is coming out of them, but even that is tinged with the reminder of what they had to do to get there, to get to this point.

Fact is, blood is on all of their hands, and that itself is enough to make each of them slightly wary of one another.

“Yoongi-hyung!”

He has, however, learnt to trust a few throughout the past few years. It would surely be a lonely life without them, though… he is surely being lonely wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to him. It’s something he thought he was growing used to. Even so, while he sits on the couch with one leg folded over the other, freshly showered and redressed in something a little more fitting as he waits to pick up his tributes, he waves to his friend that calls his name. Or would friends be more appropriate here?

Taehyung and Jimin have always been a packaged deal, never one without the other. Jimin from District Eight, who had won two years after Yoongi, and Taehyung from District Eleven who had won the year after that, may as well be joined by the hip. Despite being from different Districts, there was seldom a moment even outside of the Games that they wouldn’t be together.

“How was your journey?” The younger of the two asks immediately, Taehyung moving to greet him with a hug; Yoongi, never one to say no to either of them, stands up to briefly wrap his arms around the other.

Physical touch was still something that made him recoil, ever reminded of hands around his throat, around his chest, trying to squeeze the very life out of him, though he holds his breath for the two of them.

Yoongi is pulling away from Jimin by the time he replies. “Uneventful,” he offers with a muted smile, one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. The back of his jacket feels a little too loose - he briefly wonders if he lost a little weight from the previous year, or if his clothes are stretching out a little - and Jimin’s fingers are already tugging at the material. Yoongi knows to surrender his clothes to the other immediately, succumbing to District Eight’s Victor and his knowledge on textiles whenever it comes to his appearance. “How about you two?”

Jimin, and even Taehyung considering how much work he is putting into the craft, should have surely been picked up as stylists by now. They would have, if being Victors wasn’t a lifelong commitment that kept them stuck in place.

“The tributes were… upset, to say the least,” Taehyung’s expression softens considerably, a certain melancholy coming across his features. “It hurts to see them like this.”

Oh, that is definitely something Yoongi understands entirely. It is within those few seconds that Jimin hands Yoongi back his jacket, and while he slips it on, it feels considerably more comfortable. Less loose, like he’s not trying on his father’s clothes as a child.

His father.

Jimin catches his attention, thankfully pulling him from his thoughts before he dives too deep. “I spent a lot of the train ride actually advising the girl from Eight, but... “ He grimaces, nose scrunching a little. “The boy from my District is very young, he decided to try and eat everything and ended up…”

It goes unsaid. Doesn’t need to. Supplying food so rich to a stomach not used to certain ingredients and flavours is surely one way to make sure it doesn’t stay too long in the system. Well, Yoongi is very much used to that sickly feeling, so sympathy is not lost on him.

It’s sad though, that the Capitol has so much in abundance that the District citizens feel almost overwhelmed when seeing things that are considered the norm away from their home.

Shit, he’s already slipping in that habit. He is a District citizen, he is a District citizen, he is from District Three--

“Hyung,” just like he can notice the way Yoongi tenses up, likely from seeing it himself, Jimin pulls his attention back. “What do you think they’ll do this year?”

They, being the ones that always remain nameless. Gamemakers sounds like such a vile word when used in context, making a game of twenty-three deaths, twenty-three innocent kids. He doesn’t want to speculate, sometimes fearing that his imagination would just come up with something that’s even worse. What he saw left an impression on him, carving out part of his soul and putting it on display, locking it away with every other Victor. Locking him away.

The three of them sink back onto the couches, the other Victors too engrossed in their own conversations to really get involved in whatever is going on with him, with them. He can’t focus on them right now, he needs to relax, he needs to stay relaxed or else he’s certain he will find himself tumbling head first into a panic attack, into some sort of anxiety. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to go into it, but it is everywhere. It, it, it, fuck, fuck.

“I don’t know, I don’t care,” he grumbles under his breath, tilting his head back so it hangs off the back of the couch, his eyes up to the ceiling above. Intricate lighting, bulbs that softly change colour from red, to orange, to yellow, to green, to blue. Over again, like a total cycle, something that is neverending, just like the train. It seems there is so much in Min Yoongi’s life that just circles around. An eternal loop, though it cracks and it splinters and it just won’t work. “I just can’t wait for this to be over.”

“You say that like the walls don’t have eyes and ears,” Taehyung hisses, pressing close, removing any of the distance that lingers between them. Like it will remove any of the risk Yoongi’s words hold. Distaste for the Games by the Districts is no secret - hatred for them either - but that is certainly not an invitation for that feeling to be vocalised. Any disdain, any anger, any dislike must be concealed and covered up with bright colours.

But Yoongi isn’t stupid. “I know, Taehyung.” He admits with a deep sigh, his shoulders just sinking. Taehyung is right. Such open dislike is surely going to bite him in the ass, and if not him, then maybe his tributes. Maybe Jeongguk. He won’t allow his own actions to negatively affect anybody other than himself. That’s just not the way he is.

“Namjoon-hyung spoke to us earlier,” Jimin is fidgeting, playing the hem of his shirt, folding it into pleats only to watch as they fall apart, no heat to keep them together. “I think he’s been assigned to the boy from Three.”

“Jeongguk?”

“On a first name basis already, hyung?” Taehyung quirks a brow, probably pleased with the way the conversation has turned away from their dislike of the Games; they all have their own reasons to hate the Capitol, and Yoongi knows why Taehyung is so adamant on covering everything up.

He has his family. He has people who live in his house in the Victor’s Village in Eleven, he has people he cares about, he has a lot to lose. So of course, of course he won’t want to be associated with any of that negativity, any of that at all.

“He asked me something, on the train,” Yoongi runs his hands down his thighs, smoothing down his trousers that ripple around the curve of his legs. “He asked me what it feels like in the Arena.”

Even Jimin freezes at that, stuck like a deer in headlights, and it’s a sensitive subject. It reopens old wounds and likely opens up new ones too. It just feels weird, it feels weird to try and put those emotions into words. That fear, that anxiety, the way it clings to you even when you leave. it doesn’t go, it doesn’t leave them, even after years.

“What did you say?”

“What could I say, Jimin?” Yoongi shrugs, trying his best to seem so nonchalant when the truth is, perhaps the exact opposite is true. It still makes his gut twist and churn, his heart to feel so disconnected from the rest of his body, thumping so violently in its boney cage. Desperate to escape, to burst out in a mess of blood and gore and flesh. He’s pretty sure that would be less painful than this life anyway. “Even if I could get my words out, it would scare the shit out of him and he really would have no chance in the Games.”

And despite what Yoongi keeps telling himself, he knows that attachment is inevitable, he knows that there is so little chance of him coming out of this unscathed. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, why does he keep being pulled into this, even when he wants anything but? Even when he tries to keep everyone safe, including himself. It gets so tiring to handle this, to deal with this.

Jimin nods, almost slowly. All it does is remind Yoongi of just how fucking sad everything is too.

“Take it easy, hyung,” Taehyung reaches forward to hover his hand over his knee, not quite touching him, not yet. “We’re just going to do whatever it is we can. That’s all we can do.”

Yoongi pauses, before he very gently pushes his knee into Taehyung’s hand, feeling his palm against his leg; he has to hold his breath, but he knows the younger is attempting to comfort him. He knows he’s just trying to help him feel a little better, and he’s not about to let Taehyung feel the same way he does. He won’t do that.

There is a buzz that fills the air, followed by the familiar sound of the intercom summoning Yoongi by the title of ‘District Three’. A little badly timed, perhaps, but he still offers the two other Victors a sheepish smile before he excuses himself. A few other pairs of eyes catch onto him, dragging over his form as he adjusts his clothes, walking toward the elevator.

Typically, mentors aren’t invited to see the tributes and the stylists until the moments before the parade, right when everybody gets their first proper look at the lambs off to slaughter. He hopes everything is alright; the elevator ride itself gives him the shakes, and he bites at his nails, particularly the one on his thumb. Biting and biting and digging his teeth into the skin until it hurts.

He’s not sure why, he just… he feels nervous now. Too nervous to make sense of it all, because why else would he have been called? Unless it was some kind of disaster, something bad had happened, he had fucked up somewhere and they must have heard. They being the eyes and ears in the walls, the omnipresent spirit that tracks them, monitors them, squashes them down and causes them so much fucking anxiety that it’s a miracle they still function. A fear that lines the bones, the layers of their skin, threaded into their blood cells, so intricately woven into their lives, their bodies, what makes them who they are.

Part of their DNA, part of their being, that everlasting fear.

“Hyung!”

Another call to him, another summons for Min Yoongi, and Jeongguk is bounding over to him like an overexcited puppy, bouncing on the balls of his feet as soon as the elevator doors chime open. He already looks so much different, his skin still tanned but a little more pink than before, no doubt teased and waxed and prepped to the so-called perfection of the Capitol’s standards. His hair is still the slightest bit damp, the curls so prominent around his ears, and he’s still smiling. Forever smiling. Like he truly is so unaffected by everything.

He’s like that in front of others, though Yoongi will swear he saw that mask slip a little on the train. A brief moment where his bottom lip wobbled, where a certain softness had come into his eyes. That call of ‘hyung’ soothes so much, so much that it doesn’t quite make much sense. But that’s ok. That’s ok. It’s ok.

Everybody is ok. At least for now.

Jeongguk looks like his clothes are all-finished, loose scraps of material pinned onto him, his stylist clearly not quite finished. He wonders why the younger got so hyped up, ready to see him. He wonders why he calls his name and runs over to him like it’s the most important thing right now.

“Are you alright?” He asks, rubbing his hands together, his own eyes running over Jeongguk’s frame, looking for a sign, any sign that indicates distress, anything. But he looks fine. That mask is still so firmly on his face.

“I was the one that asked for you,” a familiar voice, one that may as well be lifting all of the weight from his shoulders, and combined with the face of Kim Namjoon, Yoongi finds himself visibly relaxing a lot more. “I was hoping to bounce a few ideas off of you.”

Namjoon grins, dimples on either sides of his cheeks, hair coloured a bright silver and gelled back, showing the dark colour of his irises and his strong features. While he is still a new stylist, he has certainly taken the Capitol by storm with his ideas, his designs, his seemingly innate ability to create a trend out of anything. Yoongi matches his expression - though his smile shows more of his gums and while his cheeks are rounded, he doesn’t have the same facial structure as Namjoon - and yet he somehow misses the way somebody else’s eyes light up at the sight.

Having wanted to see a smile like that for what must surely feel like forever by now.

“Bounce away,” Yoongi invites, awkwardly hesitating before he pats Jeongguk’s shoulder, guiding him to follow Namjoon as well; Jeongguk himself beams, grinning so widely that it’s amazing that his cheeks don’t ache from it.

Namjoon runs a hand through his hair, going past door after door and prep team after prep team before reaching what is surely his space, the room he was given. Once inside, it’s pretty blank, with the exception of materials and a large sketchbook, some of Namjoon’s own designs etched onto the page. There is a stool in the middle of the room, a box of pins and needles resting on the cushion of it, which is picked up as the stylist sits down. And there is a pause. A brief second before-

“I want to make Jeongguk desirable.”

Right on cue, right as could have been predicted, Yoongi feels his heart sink. Not quickly, not like a sudden rush, but slowly, ever so slowly. The very words he knew he was dreading to fall from his friend’s lips. Desirable, wanted, mainly by the sponsors and the Capitol citizens because they’re more likely to want to keep him alive if he’s pretty, if he’s charming, if he allows himself to become purchasable like a slab of meat at the butcher. Lambs to slaughter, he certainly had that one right.

Desirable.

“Why not just make him charming?” He knows Namjoon, he knows him, he would never push this onto somebody, not if he knew what it really meant. But Namjoon is also one of the smartest people he knew, giving up being top student at the Academy to pursue the arts, which made him truly happy. He’s too clever for this, but too kind to mean it. “I mean, he has a good personality. Warm, likeable as it is. Why not portray him as this… this kid-next-door kind of trope?”

He feels like he should be getting down onto his knees and begging, especially when Namjoon shakes his head. “He’s eighteen, one of the oldest tributes. You don’t want to infantilize him, hyung.”

“I also don’t want this to affect the rest of his life should he live, Namjoon.”

Yoongi doesn’t want to be mean. He doesn’t want to take his own stress out on anybody, and he’s about to pull away, to leave when Jeongguk himself clears his throat, pulling into the conversation as a participant as opposed to just the subject matter. “Can we talk?” He asks Yoongi, his eyebrows up and his lips pressed together; he can hardly say no.

There is a shared look between Namjoon and Jeongguk, and the stylist heaves himself up from his stool, giving them a brief moment together unattended. Though why, because the reasoning itself is entirely lost on Yoongi.

“Namjoon-ssi said my personality shines through when I talk to Kim Seokjin-ssi,” Jeongguk speaks quietly, like he’s afraid any volume in his voice will make Yoongi burst, make him wither like a flower left in the blinding heat. “That it’s my appearance that matters first as this is when I draw first impressions. My personality and how I speak, how I come across more than that happens after.”

And he’s not wrong, Namjoon isn’t wrong. The parade gathers interest, the outfits, the hair, and the makeup, that is what is important. Catching attention, having people wonder who you are first of all, and then allow them to get to know you as the week goes on, right before you enter the Arena itself. When your other side comes out on display, completely and utterly unadulterated.

But he doesn’t want to think about that, and right now he can’t. Because Yoongi is fixating on what happens afterwards, on the stroke of luck that Jeongguk lives. That desire will turn bitter, will end up hurting him in the long run, and he doesn’t want his name to that, doesn’t want to be responsible, doesn’t want to be the one that allowed and campaigned for the suspected suffering of another person.

“ Hyung,” Jeongguk whispers, stepping close with those big brown eyes; Yoongi is most definitely wilting. “You think so loudly, you might as well be screaming.”

Jeongguk’s socks push against the toes of Yoongi’s shoes, and they’re so close that he feels heat just pour off of the tribute in front of him. Too close, too close, reminding him of too much, making him think, making him remember, fucking breathe, Yoongi--

“I’m,” he licks his lips, halting on the word. “I just… I’m not sure.”

“I won’t do anything you tell me not to,” Jeongguk whispers, breathing sounding like it’s catching in his throat, holding onto the tip of his tongue. “You’re my mentor, I trust you.”

Yoongi… Yoongi wants to laugh. A bitter sound if compared to the real thing. “You’ve known me all of twenty-four hours, Jeongguk, you can’t trust somebody that quickly.”

“We trust our allies in the Games, knowing that they’re likely to kill us.” He muses aloud. “I trust my mentor because he has nothing to lose if I win, and nothing to lose if I don’t.”

Oh, how can he be so right and so wrong at the same time?

He sees the logic. He sees the explanation and he gets it, he does, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it. Doesn’t mean he has to enjoy the fact this brat is seemingly right already. God, this is going to be frustrating, isn’t it? To be corrected by a bunny grin and a nose scrunch and eyes that hold pure galaxies.

Don’t even go there, Yoongi.

He can’t fault him, though. He runs a hand over his face, pulling at his cheeks, trying to think of some new excuse to use. Anything, he’ll take anything at this point, anything that will combat the remarkably hopeful look in his tribute’s eyes, and he just sighs. A harsh sound from between his lips, looking off to the side; he hates these rooms. He always felt inhuman in them, like he was some sort of doll to be dressed up for the pleasure of somebody else entirely. Is that really so inaccurate though?

Yoongi pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s like I’m being asked to prioritise your life before the Games or your life after.”

“How about we just make sure I have a life after?”

Jeongguk gives a breathless chuckle, his nose scrunching again, and Yoongi feels his own heart skip for a moment. He thinks, reckons it’s because he’s shocked that somebody facing an uncertain death is able to laugh, is able to joke about this sort of thing. Though it’s bold of him to assume that Jeongguk is in any way joking.

Those hands pull and gently tease on the loose fabric that hangs off his frame, swimming his figure and almost hiding him. There is this desire to touch - the fabric, of course, the material - to feel it sift through his fingers like powdered sugar, clinging to his skin and making him taste too sweet. Too sweet for his tastes. We, we, too sweet, too much to make sense of that simple statement. It’s just a simple statement.

“I won’t be responsible,” he has to almost choke to get it out, and he steps back, grateful for the distance he is providing between the two of them. “Whatever happens after the Games, if you win, I won’t be responsible.”

He won’t have somebody’s future in his control, he won’t be the one that decided what they can and can’t do, what they have to do afterwards in order to survive. Yoongi did what he had to in order to keep his own life, even if it did result in him essentially signing over his own identity to the Capitol.

Thinking about it, he’s not sure what’s worse. Dying off in the Games and used as entertainment, or surviving and forced to turn into some Capitol plaything for the rest of his years?

There is only one winner, and even though Yoongi is a Victor, he never won the Games.

Jeongguk steps back too, establishing that boundary, respecting it in the best way he can before he wrings his hands together, linking his fingers together and squeezing. Easing his own anxiety, trying to comfort himself because by catching the look in his hyung’s eyes, he figures his mentor isn’t going to be able to do that for the meanwhile. Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

Right now, he could ask for anything, and Yoongi would say yes just to placate him. Anything at all, anything if it means he would get a moment of freedom from this room, from each memory practically suffocating him. Like a hand is reaching down his throat, into his lungs, and siphoning off the air like fuel in a gas tank, bleeding him dry until there is nothing left to help him function.

He wanted to keep separate, he wanted to keep selfish. Now here he is, down with the stylists with a half-dressed tribute asking for help, asking for Yoongi to help him live instead of just surrendering to his fate. Yet he doesn’t want to get his hopes up. With high hopes comes pain and hurt when they struggle to come to fruition. Yoongi should be selfish, Yoongi should just walk out now, but he finds his feet are so firmly rooted to the ground, woven into the flooring, keeping him in place. It must be some otherworldly reason that he’s stuck here.

It’s the only thing that makes sense.

“All I ask is that you get me through the Games,” his voice is gentle, and when Yoongi looks up, Jeongguk looks more sheepish than before. “That’s all.”

Yoongi can’t find himself saying no. The nod that he just about manages is brief, is small, is barely there but it’s enough to light up Jeongguk’s features like he’s been told he has a chance, that he has the highest chances, like he really believes Yoongi’s help is more than it so obviously is worth. The lights in the room shift, turning a little brighter, a little warmer, and flecks of gold light up in Jeongguk’s hair, like streaks of sunlight painted into his dark curls, across his tanned skin, lit up with all the freckles that dance across his cheeks and nose; and Yoongi hopes this is some sort of sign.

Fuck it. He’ll take it as one anyway.

“Alright,” he succumbs, opening up his heart once again. “I’ll help you.”