A/N: Oh yeah. It's happening. My first multichap in almost a year! I have no idea how long this will run- my best guess is 30 chapters, given that it's going to go through Mockingjay, but I truly have no clue. I have five chapters written already and I plan to update once a week on Sundays, but no guarantees; I'm babying myself when it comes to deadlines to make sure I don't burn out. If you'd like to see my progress, I'll try to update the "Today's Progress" portion of my profile every day with the work I do on this story as well as my other projects.

This chapter was beta-read by the lovely tracelynn, who is a beautiful writer and a beautiful person.

In District Two, the Reaping is a time of celebration. The mines are closed, their children are safe, and their tributes are eager to bring a year of fortune and glory back home. So families carry potluck meals to the square and everyone gathers from miles around, miners and hopeful volunteers and even Peacekeepers, for this is a holiday for all of them.

They find themselves on the edge of the celebration, looking in at the people cheering the chance of a year of wealth. Boys wearing the proudly patched clothes of the mines jog over every so often to slap Cato on the back and swap stories of when they'd grown up together. They don't do more than give Clove a cursory glance, probably guessing that he's doing a friend a favor by keeping an eye on their little sister while they enjoy the festivities. She can't say she blames them for dismissing her. If she'd been quarry-built and heard that a fifteen-year-old as thin and brittle as a twig was the top of her class at the Academy and had even been this year's prospective volunteer before deciding otherwise, she'd have sent them straight off to the psych ward to get their head checked out.

But it still feels good when Cato tugs her to his side and introduces her as "my girlfriend, Clove. Remember the girl I told you about?" and the friend blanches and stammers out some sort of greeting before finding an excuse to run off.

"What kind of stories did you tell them about me?" Clove asks, amused, as another boy pretends to hear someone calling for him and hurries away.

Cato grins down at her. "Just the truth."

She pouts. "Aw, did you have to scare them that much?"

He feigns a horrified gasp. "What else was I going to do? Lie?"

Some of them recognize her from the Academy and give her a quick nod of acknowledgement before moving along. They never stick around to chat, and with the memories she's sure they have of her leaning up against the wall and teasing Cato as she tossed knives lazily across the gym to hit the bullseye set up against the opposite wall, she's not exactly surprised.

Two more people from the Academy come over, but unlike the others, Clove actually knows their names. "Hey, June. Hi, Slate. You excited for today?"

"Of course!" June bounces on her toes, a wide smile on her pretty face. "This is the best day of my life!"

Clove tries not to think of how this might be one of the last days of her life, too.

June's specialty is throwing knives, like Clove. She's not quite as good, but then again, no one is. Slate is tough but less bulky than Cato. They'll make a good team, but they were always second place in the Academy, and Clove doesn't think that will change in the Games. If she and Cato hadn't been deemed too codependent and unstable to handle entering the arena, especially not together, one of them would have won, no doubt about it. They were too skilled, too vicious, too good to be anything but Victors.

But there's no sense in dwelling on what could have been, so instead she pulls June away from Cato and Slate for some last-minute advice.

"Ooh, tips from the top student herself!" June claps her hands together in a way that would be insincerely cheerful on anyone else.

Clove laughs. "Don't let Cato hear you say that. He'll get jealous."

"I won't say a word," June promises, beaming. Her angle in the arena will be sly and mysterious, clever in a way that Two's volunteers rarely are. It's hard to learn complex strategies when they drop out of school at age ten. The real June is charming and friendly, more used to delivering bright smiles than dangerous smirks, but Clove's sat through enough image training classes to know how quickly they can become their angle.

Clove looks up at the sky and starts going through all of the various scenarios she'd run through the night before. "All right, so right after the Bloodbath, you'll want to…"

The sun is almost perfectly overhead when the people in the square move as a whole to the census booths. Order and discipline are what make their society work, what keep them all safe. Maybe they all realize the need to move at the same time, or maybe they've just learned to follow with the rest of the pack when someone else leads. Either way, there's no scuffling or squabbling as people wait patiently for their finger to be pricked and their name to be recorded.

The crowd oozes into the area closest to the stage. Cato joins her, and he and Clove walk down the main aisle until they reach a roped-off section marked with a "15". "Come and find me afterwards," she says.

"I will," he calls over his shoulder, already being pushed away by the force of the crowd.

She finds a place to stand beside some girls she doesn't recognize. She doesn't know anyone in this entire row; being promoted three levels beyond your age group will do that to you. She smiles at them all the same and joins their conversation, a light-hearted discussion about who they think this year's volunteers will be.

"I bet it's that giant blond boy," one of them says, tilting her head over at where Cato's head rises above the crowd. Clove fights a smile. "He looks like he'd put on a good show."

One of the girls, dark and pretty, pauses midway through her response and narrows her eyes at Clove. "You've got an Academy bracelet," she points out, flashing her own. "But I've never seen you in class before."

Clove shrugs. "I'm in a different class," she says. "Or, I was. Soon as today's over, I'm out of the Academy."

"You're graduating already?" another girl asks, wrinkling her nose like she can't quite believe someone forty pounds lighter and a good half a foot shorter is already being promoted. "Or are you getting kicked out?"

Clove laughs, high and humorless, remembering again how glad she is to leave these people with their smiles like knives sliding between her ribs and sticking in her throat. "I chose to leave, actually."

The other girls exchange knowing, mocking glances that make her want to throw all subtlety to the wind and spit out how she was supposed to be the volunteer, how many people she'd killed to reach that point, but she doesn't. It's better for all of them that just then, the mayor steps forward and the speech begins.

She blocks it out, like usual. It's not like it changes over the years. She could probably deliver it alongside the mayor, pausing at all the right places. The only people who bother to listen to it are the children who haven't yet heard it enough to have it memorized, and even then, most of them squirm quietly beside their families or focus on the Victors lining the back of the stage.

Their Victors are not an unbroken line of bronzed beauties like in One, nor the shambling, sallow-skinned addicts of Six. They stand tall and proud and strong, each one, even the women, at least half a foot taller than Clove and much more muscular. She's tiny but she would have been lethal, setting the Capitol aflutter with her delicate features and nasty smirks as she sculpted her prey with a knife's lingering kiss. She swallows down the tiny part of her that still clamors to be up there, glaring down at the civilians with them, and tells herself it's better this way.

The speech ends, and the mayor eschews her seat, instead standing alongside the Victors, who don't shift away from her but don't invite her closer, either. The escort bobbles up on lime green heels with a wig to match and titters into the microphone. "The Capitol appreciates the strength of its loyal citizens! Today, to defer to tradition, we'll begin with our female tribute!"

Clove exchanges a sidelong glance with the dark-skinned girl who'd pointed out her bracelet, and they might not like each other but they're joined in a camaraderie of mutual hatred for the shallow, painted creature before them. Love the Capitol, hate the people, some quietly sneer whenever the only working channel in the bar is the one that plays the Capitol's "reality" movies.

The escort zips over to one of the Reaping balls and fishes around for a slip. "And this year's female tribute is... Clove Kentwell!"

Blood roars in her ears. She can't hear anything besides the rapid beating of her heart. All the air has left her lungs, leaving just lightness behind. She sways like prey, like meat, like the weaklings she always scoffs at when she watches the recaps of other Districts, not her own, never her own, for Two doesn't falter.

Two doesn't falter. She tilts her chin up confidently, arrogantly, as the girl beside her whispers, "Isn't that you?" She ignores her and moves past her, feeling her Career face strengthen and solidify with each step. By the time she reaches the stairs, she is as cold and cruel as ice, and she doesn't need to look up at the screen to know that she looks like a Victor.

The escort looks a little taken aback by how ready Clove looks; most Reaped tributes, even in Two, shiver and shake as they climb the stairs. "My, aren't you a young one? And so bold, too!" She pinches Clove's cheek and smiles, lipstick and teeth and not much else. "How do you feel, miss? Would you like to stay and try your luck?"

Yes rises to her lips immediately, bloodlust singing in her veins as she thinks of going to the Capitol, of scorching her way through the arena, of blood and screams. It's been her dream ever since five-year-old Clove snuck downstairs and watched beautiful Cashmere of One slash her way to victory, almost a lifetime of wishing, waiting. She can't just give that all up now, not when she's so close she can feel the glory breathing down her back, whispering in her ear. A small smile curves her mouth as she opens it to speak-

And then a violent flurry of movement at the front of the crowd catches her eye. A boy, built like a giant, his brutish face made unrecognizable by the fury and terror that contort it into the mask of a monster, shoves his way through the other eighteens in his row, pushing them aside like they're children instead of the trained killers they are. "Clove!" he shouts as a group of burly boys latch on to him and try to slow him down. "Clove!"

The fog lifts, and she can breathe again. "It seems I have my admirers," Clove says, smiling sweetly at the escort. "But I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint them this year."

The escort beams. "Maybe another year, then! All right, do we have any volunteers?"

"I volunteer!" June lunges forward in a sharp move designed to draw the eye, and it works. The cameras latch onto her immediately, plastering her coy smile on screens all across the square. She scales the stairs quickly and finds the cameras without seeming to, arranging herself in her most flattering light as she replaces Clove without so much as a blink of acknowledgement.

Forgotten, Clove slips down the stairs as June proudly announces herself and the crowd applauds. Cato's almost at the edge of his row, no longer shouting but still wild-eyed and frantic, so she melts into his row and makes her way to his side before anyone can tell her otherwise. There's so much raw relief on his face it hurts, but the crowd is again silent, so she just laces her fingers with his and looks back at the stage.

Slate's volunteering goes off without a hitch, and the boy's mother actually runs up to the stage to thank him with tears in her eyes as he lets her shell-shocked child return to the crowd. It's a beautiful moment and one that they'll replay later in the recaps, gushing over how grateful Two is, how eager their tributes are to prove their worth. He and June shake hands, the anthem plays, and the square empties.

Cato and Clove don't leave with the last of the stragglers. She buries her face in his side and leans against him as he pulls her closer with trembling hands. "I was so scared," he whispers.

"I know." She should feel terrified, should have more of a reaction other than a faint feeling of loss. "I wanted it, you know. I almost said yes." Almost let them take me, almost watched you volunteer to protect me, almost destroyed us, she finishes the thought for herself.

His hands curl and claw at her shoulders. "I know you did." A shaky sigh ruffles her hair. "I don't know what I would have done."

"Gone after me," she says, too calmly, and tonight she'll be sobbing and screaming at how she nearly ruined them both, but all she can think now is I wish I had stayed. "Watched me die, watched me kill you, watched me lose." The words are heavy on her tongue, but she knows they're the truth: one way or another, she would not have won these Games. "Thank you for... for reminding me what's important. I need you." An ugly, choked sob claws its way up her throat, and she can barely get her words out. "I need you."

"I need you too," Cato says, pressing her even closer to him and digging his hands into her Reaping-perfect ringlets. "You know I'd walk through hell for you, just- just make it a hell we can both survive, okay?"

She raises a hand in Panem's salute. "I promise I'll choose a better one next time." He pokes her in the cheek and she elbows him in the stomach and they both laugh, and if it's a bit shakier than usual, well, that's all right.