Chapter Text
Part One - Tribute
Chapter One
It's half past nine on a cool early autumn evening in Lumiose City, and Augustine Sycamore rolls out of his boyfriend's bed, reaches for his clothes, and smiles in triumph to himself.
"Well?" Meyer grins, sprawled on his front in the messy bed, hair tousled and eyes bright, still catching his breath, "What did you think?"
Augustine grins back, sitting down to pull his clothes back on. "It was good," he confirms, muffling a squeak as Meyer tugs him back down for another kiss, "We should have done that earlier, you know."
Meyer shrugs a little, smiling sheepishly. "Yeah, but the timing was right." He stands himself, hunting around the small room as he tries to locate his underwear. "Besides, we can do that again, right?"
"So long as neither of us die tomorrow, sure." Augustine is still smiling, taking refuge in gallows humour, even as he buttons up his shirt. "Or, well, in a week or so. You know what I mean."
For just a moment, Meyer's smile falters. "Yeah..." Shaking his head, he drags his shirt back on, rolling the sleeves back up and scratching idly at his wrist. "Look - Augustine, tomorrow, if that's my name that gets called..."
"It won't be." His words are sharp, the mood in the little room suddenly darkening. "It's not going to be you, okay? You're going to get through this and then you'll be fine."
Meyer doesn't answer immediately, doing his jeans back up. "But then I have to watch my brothers and sisters deal with it too," he points out quietly. "You're an only child - if you get through tomorrow and next year, then your family is fine. It's more... serious for us, I guess. There's six of us."
Augustine winces, because it's true. He has never had to take out tessarae, knows that his name will be in there at the absolute bare minimum for a seventeen-year-old. Meyer not only has all the tickets that an eighteen-year-old is meant to receieve, but tesserae for him, for five brothers and sisters, and for his parents.
The odds are not in his favour.
"You'll be fine," Augustine finally manages to say, pasting the smile back on his face. "Seriously. Even if you have a lot of tickets in there, Central Kalos is a big district."
Meyer makes a discomforted sound, but nods. Now dressed, he crosses back to Augustine's side of the bed and tilts his chin up for a quick kiss, pressing their foreheads together. "Want me to walk you back home?" he murmurs, "I should have enough time to get back before curfew."
Augustine makes an affirmative sound, finding Meyer's hand as he shoves his feet in his shoes and allows himself to be led down the rickety stairs. Meyer's siblings are gathered around the small television (with the exception of the youngest, already asleep in the other bedroom and, at six years old, well and truly free from Reaping Day), and his mother is in the kitchen, preparing food for tomorrow.
If their children survive the next day, they will have food to celebrate. If not... well, they most likely won't be in much of a mood to cook.
And it is hard for Meyer's family. Four kids between twelve and eighteen, and he knows that Meyer will volunteer for any of his brothers in an instant. Even with all his own tickets, there's still all of the others to add on as well, and Augustine can entirely understand why Meyer might be worried.
Meyer sneaks a slice of pecha berry from the bowl of fruit salad, and his mother calls out, "Get your filthy mitts out of there or you won't get any tomorrow," a smile in her voice. Meyer shoves the piece of fruit in his mouth and tries to look innocent, surripticiously wiping his fingers on a cloth.
"Maman, what if I got called tomorrow," he says, voice full of mock injury, "And the last thing you said to me was that I had filthy mitts?"
She laughs, but it's a little on the strained side. "Are you going to walk Gus home?"
"Uh huh." Meyer reaches for their jackets, hung on the peg board near the kitchen door. "I'll be back by ten, promise."
Nodding, she returns to the food. "Okay. If it gets too late, just stay over, alright?"
The boys both give affirmative sounds - Augustine half wants them to run out of time just so Meyer will have a good excuse to stay over - and head out into the chilly air. Augustine shivers involuntarily, and Meyer, warm and reassuringly solid, wraps an arm around his shoulders.
"Are you worried?" Augustine bursts out without really thinking about it. "About tomorrow. What will you do if you do get reaped?"
Meyer frowns to himself, half gazing at the shadowed path so they don't stumble, removing his arm from Augustine's shoulders and reaching for his hand instead. "I don't know," he says slowly. "Try my hardest to win, I guess."
"You have a chance," Augustine points out, "To win. I mean it. You're strong, you're fast, you're a really good climber - I bet you could pick up using weapons really easily, and if there's any electronics in the Arena, you'd be really good at that - and the older ones win a lot more, you'd have really good odds."
Meyer shrugs uncomfortably. "I don't know. I don't think I could kill anyone... Surviving only goes so far, but you've gotta fight at the end, at least." He sighs. "What would you do?"
What would he do? Augustine is quiet as they walk, frowning at the path. He's tall, but he's thin, and he's unco-ordinated to boot. He can't fight. He knows a bit about Pokemon, but probably not enough to save his life. "Die, I guess," he jokes morbidly. "I don't know. Maybe I'll pick something up - or Auntie Drasna can give me advice."
"It'd be shit if you did get called," Meyer observes grimly, "She'd have to mentor her own nephew, that'd be really hard..."
"Especially if I die," Augustine finishes evenly. "Yeah, I know."
There's a nasty silence.
"If your name gets called," Meyer starts to say slowly, and Augustine squeezes his hand hard.
"You're not volunteering for me," he says, his voice sharp. "Absolutely not. You're going to take care of your siblings, and then you're going to meet someone nice and be really happy with them, and you'll be okay."
His voice catches on the last part.
Meyer is silent for a moment. "Yeah," he says softly, voice strained. "Okay. Also, you need to promise the same thing. Don't volunteer for me, and if I get reaped, then try and find someone else and live a really good life. And..." He hesitates for a moment. "And if you could help look after my family, I'd really appreciate that."
"I will." Augustine clings to his hand tightly, then sighs - the gates of the Victor's Village, where he has lived with his parents and his Victor aunt for his entire life, has emerged into view. "Do you have enough time to get home before curfew?"
Meyer checks his watch, then nods. "Yeah, I have enough." They stop outside the gate, and Meyer tugs him close, pulling him into a hug that's more desperate than romantic. "See you tomorrow," he says, voice far more subdued than his usual cheerful tone. "Get a good night's sleep, okay?"
"You too," Augustine murmurs against his shoulder, unwilling to let go straight away. "Um... night. See you tomorrow."
They part with a kiss, and Augustine waits at the gate, and watches until Meyer is swallowed up by the darkness.
Reaping Day is solemn. There are no classes for the students (although Augustine has an unfairly early exam in two days, assuming he survives this day - should his name not be the one called, he will be spending the afternoon studying, most likely. And if it is called... well, "Thrown into a battle to the death" is probably a good excuse for missing a test), and the places of work are closed until midday, by which point the Reaping will be over.
Augustine is quiet, pensive as he makes his way down to breakfast, barely managing a weak smile at his father. Despite his relatively few tickets, he knows that even the twelve-year-olds get called sometimes. The odds may be more in his favour, but on Reaping Day, anyone can become the Capitol's latest victim.
And he's worried about Meyer. They've only been dating for a few months, but he's already really quite infatuated, and he knows that if Meyer's name is called out, something in him will break.
Why is the morning so long? His breakfast seems like it barely fills up any time at all, no matter how long he takes to eat it, trying hard to appreciate the slightly better quality of food that being family of a Victor affords and finding it tasteless nonetheless. He leaves the breakfast table and washes, dressing himself in the neat black slacks and blue button-up shirt he's set aside for the reaping, and finds with dismay that it's still only eight in the morning.
Exchanging small talk with his parents fills in ten minutes, reading the paper takes up another twenty. The exam he has to study for manages to distract him for an entire forty minutes, gazing at his notes with an unfocused eye (it's for mathematics, not his strongest point - he far prefers biology). When his aunt returns from her morning task of tending to the dragons, he slumps on the sofa next to her, neither speaking, and the silence takes up another five minutes.
Today is Reaping Day for the thirty-first Hunger Games. Drasna won the eighth at the age of sixteen, and she's not even forty but the stress of every Game she's ever mentored shows in every line on her face.
She is the only victor that Central Kalos has ever had. Wulfric, from the second Games, and Olympia, the winner from two years earlier, both hail from Mountain Kalos, and Coastal Kalos has never seen a victor, ever.
It's not a great track record. His aunt has seen a lot of their tributes die.
A few streets away, he knows Meyer is getting ready; preparing himself for the trial of the Reaping, helping get two brothers (twelve and fifteen) and his sister (fourteen) ready. Four children in one family, all going to the Reaping... and he knows that even if Meyer survives, even if this is the last time his name will ever be in there, he will not breathe easily until every one of his siblings safely makes it through.
Today, and next year. That's all Augustine has to get through himself, and then his family will be safe (unless he has children of his own, and frankly, that's something he just can't imagine himself doing).
The morning continues. Augustine naps on the sofa next to Drasna, her Noivern watching over the both of them, restless even in the scraps of sleep he manages to get.
And finally it's time, time to make their way to Lumiose Square (rather poorly named, given that it's a circle), to line up for registration and to be shuffled into the section for seventeen-year-old boys. He strains to see Meyer over the tops of the heads of the eighteen-year-old girls, but the distance between them is just a little too far - instead, he stands there, surrounded by other boys from Lumiose and Central Kalos beyond that, and waits for their fate to be told.
The announcer extols the virtues of the Capitol in far-off Unova and everything that they have done for Kalos, and Augustine tries not to grit his teeth. A product of her environment, the announcer is polished up like a piece of glass, making Augustine wince if he looks at her directly - the difference between glitz and glamour and the shabbiness of the non-Capitol-owned buildings and the teenagers filling the square is quite remarkable.
She calls out the girls first, and Sophie, a terrified girl from the fifteen-year-old section, slowly makes her way through the crowd, flanked by Peacekeepers. She's shaking visibly on the large screens that surround them, stretched far over the stage, and Augustine feels a pang of sympathy for her.
"And now, the boys," the announcer says, and withdraws the slip of paper. "The male tribute for Central Kalos is..."
Augustine turns automatically to where he knows Meyer will be, crossing his fingers, hoping amongst hope that it won't be his name, or the name of one of his brothers, that is called out today.
And it's not.
"...Augustine Sycamore."