SPARK ✩ CORIOLANUS SNOW.¹

𝐭𝐰𝐨.

          In seconds, chaos exploded in the courtyard. The words could barely leave her mouth before people were trying to lunge for Deysa, violence promised in their closed fists and profanities falling from their lips. Beside Jude, his mother stood frozen in shock. On his other side, his father was quick to join the mayhem, trying to push to the front of the gathered people to get his voice heard. There had to be a mistake, he was saying, there had to be some sort of misunderstanding.

But there wasn't. 

But there couldn't be. 

Because District 2 was one of the final ones to be Reaped due to the differing timezones amongst the Districts. The many other Districts to come before had already been through this process and, due to the Games proceeding just like they were right in front of them, nothing had been changed. 

Jude's ears were beginning to ring. He couldn't hear anything outside of the roaring of his own panic, violent and loud at the base of his skull. People shoved against his back and his sides. Peacekeeper guns shot into the sky, some even landed into the arms and the chests of civilians at the front. Their bodies were dragged across the dry gravel and out of the square. With a startle, Jude realized that this was why he saw the influx of Peacekeepers earlier; for the control  of the crowd, and for the cleanup of the rowdy ones. 

His father settled back into his side forcefully as the crowd settled back into a restless stupor in their former spots. His jaw shook as it worked, and Jude could almost hear his teeth grinding together. 

Onstage, Deysa made her way back to the microphone. She cleared her throat, and Jude turned his attention to the screen reluctantly, unsure if he even wanted to listen to what she was going to say. 

"Everyone of legal age and eligible is in the drawing," she clarified. Her attention turned back toward the children in front of her. "You, my dears, are free until next year." 

Jude felt his chest deflate a little in relief. There was no way his name would be called. The bowls were filled to the brim with names. His odds were severely outweighed. By instinct, he squeezed his mother's hand again, just once. 

"Ladies first, of course," Deysa said, and her ruby red heels echoed on the elevated makeshift stage. Tension buzzed anew in the air now. The crowd was anything but silent, murmurs echoing amongst themselves in furious discussion. Jude wanted to talk to his parents, wanted some kind of reassurance or answers, but couldn't make himself look away or speak. 

Papers fluttered as Deysa buried her hand in the bowl on her leftmost side. Her fingers closed around one, pulling it up as if she were gently plucking a flower. She took the same preciousness in her time as she unfolded it, lifted her eyes, leaned into the microphone, and said, "Mason Juniper." 

Now, the crowd slipped into silence once again. Heads turned and looked around for the woman until the soft sound of footsteps started down the middle of the square. Peacekeepers met a brown haired woman to escort her the rest of the way, stood on either of her side with a hand on each of her elbows. 

In the sea of children, a soft girl's voice croaked out, "Mama?" Mason's head turned to the right toward it, and the girl's voice strengthened again. "No, no! Mama!" 

"It's okay." Mason was not soft spoken but stern in her reassurance, nodding once to emphasize it even if her daughter could not hear her. "It will be alright, Riah, do you hear me?" 

The girl descended into sobs as Mason joined Deysa on the stage. Finally, Jude could see the face of the first District 2 tribute. Her jaw was sharp and angular, her skin a sun-kissed tan with honey brown eyes and chocolate dipped hair. Anger stained her expression as she stared straight ahead, meeting no one's eyes. 

Jude could only focus on the sobs as he searched the crowd for his brother. He spent the entire year since the last Reaping trying to reassure him that this one would be alright, too, and now he was desperate to reassure him again, this time for the opposite reason. He would be alright. He had to be. There would be no way that in the hundreds of adult males in District 2, his name--

"Jude Carlisle." 

On his right, his mother gasped. On his left, his father snapped into two. It was no great feat for the entirety of District 2 to figure out where Jude was in the crowd; not when his father was marching through them and shouting, "he's a child, you're going to kill him!" 

Ironically, it was his father that doomed him, then. The Peacekeepers knew exactly where in the courtyard that the Carlisle family stood, and where to grab a frozen Jude Carlisle when he didn't begin to walk himself toward the Justice Building. On his way up, he saw another one of the Peacekeepers shoving his father into the ground, a fist pummeling his face into the gravel. A sharp crack sounded as his jaw snapped to the side. He saw Sage, finally, his own jaw dropped in horror. 

In the years of his youth, he was entirely convinced that the Games were not something he was afraid of. And he wasn't; he could handle them. But this... this was not the Hunger Games. This was a death sentence. Jude took one look at the scorned Mason in front of him and knew that she would do anything it took to get back to her heartbroken daughter. He knew that every single other District held tributes with the same stories. 

And here he was, only just barely an adult. He'd only been twenty one for weeks now. These people had children, some could have grandchildren. With meager hope, Jude wondered if some of the other tributes were anywhere around his age, or if he was just doomed. A little fawn with a target on its back. 

His feet halted him to a stop, and he stood staring out into the crowd. Unlike Mason, he faced them all. There, his crying mother. There, his father, being dragged like a sack of flour out of the Justice Building's courtyard. And there, his visibly trembling baby brother, who he had promised that he would do something for, and that he did. He did. 

Mason turned to him wordlessly and offered her hand. Something unreadable flashed in her eyes at the sight of him, and he selfishly hoped it was guilt or doubt or something that could offer him some semblance of a chance. 

Jude took her hand and shook it, and felt himself signing his life away in an instant. 

✩ ✩ ✩