District Six Reapings

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Trams rattle in and out of the square with alarming intensity. District Six is never still. The people, though many would be afraid to leave the district, find it impossible to stay in one spot and are always shuffling around like bumblebees. Only a strict Peacekeeper presence stops them from wandering during the reapings.

They try hard, they really do. Parents force their children into smart clothes, scrubbing them until they gleam an unnatural pink colour and teasing - and in some cases dragging - messy hair into an acceptable style. The square, usually dotted with the coloured umbrellas of the market, is mostly grey, with the occasional spot of white or black. The floor is made up mostly of impeccably maintained concrete tiles, on which children usually scribble in chalk while their parents trade. But today all signs of colour in the square have been drained away. The curtains of the practical grey Justice Building have been switched from their usual deep blue to black. District Six are ever-obedient, but that doesn't mean that the Games aren't a sad occasion for them. Even the sky is unbroken grey.

"Ow! That fucking hurt, woman!"

Several adults sigh and cover the ears of their children as they wait in the line for the pens. Mercedes Fadle is at it again. She's famous throughout the district - not that it takes much to be famous in the largely peaceful Six - and not in a good way. Some blame her parents. Some of them kind of wish she'd be reaped. A Peacekeeper glares at her but doesn't move to stop her complaining. The woman taking the blood samples looks hassled. They had this last year too, and the year before that.

"Name," she sighs, though she already knows. It's just a formality and she has to do it. If only Mercedes' parents would accompany her to the reaping, though she doubts that it would make that much of a difference. Mercedes grits her perfect teeth, glaring at the rest of the line as if they've personally offended her. The line, already tense with anticipation and not willing to have their collective patience pushed today, glare back. Well, the adults and the older children do. The younger children, those in the pot for the first time, look at her with a kind of respect. She seems completely unafraid. Unlike the people who have been forced to make an effort for their reaping, she forced her parents into putting the dress away and wears a pair of workers' overalls, grubby with oil and brake fluid.

"Mercedes Fadle," the girl with the long ivory hair snaps.

If it wasn't for her foul tongue and scowling expression, she would look too young to be of reaping age. At only just five feet, most of the typically lanky twelve year olds tower over her. But she makes up for it with the power of her voice and her glare.

"Move along now, Mercedes," sighs the woman, crossing her fingers. She's not up to what happened last year; she got a mouthful about how 'effing pointless it was to take a blood sample and it was some sadistic torture on behalf of the Capitol, those sons of female dogs.

Most people have given up on censoring Mercedes' speech by now.

"It'd be almost worth going to the fucking Capitol just to avoid having that fucking spear jammed into my finger, Mercedes announces to nobody in particular and saunters on, her hair swinging. She's a pretty girl, not that anybody dares to point this out to her. Her mother hopes that one day she'll make somebody a fine wife. Once she settles down, of course. She tells everybody that it's just the divorce that has unsettled her. After all, she was a model pupil before then.

Mercedes is one hundred and ten percent certain that she will not settle down.

As she weaves through the bumbling crowd, snapping at everybody who dares to stand in her way, she feels a brave soul clap a hand onto her shoulder.

It's her teacher. Well, not her teacher exactly, but the person who helps out at the school, probably because the lazy sod can't be bothered to do any proper work. She remembers kicking him in the shins last year. Still of reaping age, and slim and energetic, with deep brown eyes and hair that in Mercedes' opinion could really do with a good cut, several of the girls would do whatever he asked them to.

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