A Circus of Eagles [An HG Fanfic]

Copper

"You can't do anything to me!" she taunts from the cobblestones. "I'm already in there one hundred and thirty times! You can't do anything!"

She's right, too. Not long ago they'd have been able to beat her. Now that isn't allowed.

What they can do, though, is manhandle her to her feet. Between the two faceless uniforms she is a burst of color, purple hair offset by red lipstick, and when she rearranges her overalls her sleeves twitch and reveal the tips of lush green tattoos. She stands proudly and doesn't look around as they march her off.

This has effectively dispersed the protest. By the time the girl is out of sight the front of the station is empty, more deserted than it has ever been. Even the usual 'casual bystanders' usually generated by a strike being broken up are absent. A few families dawdle past, heads bowed, but at a sharp reminder from the Peacekeepers they hurry on towards the square.

"Come on, Rat!"

Rat's big brother Gaius grabs his hand and tugs him along Station Pass. Many families in Copper have ancestry not too far back in the districts and the Maigans are one of them. All three of the brothers have a hint of District Seven around their features, their murky green eyes barely a shade away from leaves in the dusk. Gaius, the official handsome one, has a strong jawline and a nose that could have come straight from a statue of a noble citizen. His skin is a smooth sunkissed tan and he wears his formal suit - green with blue linings and an always-fashionable slim line on the legs - casually. Rat's suit is similar, only deep brown, and despite the best efforts of the family Avox it still slips over his shoulders and forms muddy puddles around his ankles.

"Stand properly, Rutilius. You'll be so much more comfortable if you don't slouch; I can't think where you get it from!" Mother Maigan chirrups. She is a small and thin woman, nervous, with frazzled hair dyed soft auburn and the same hooded eyes as her sons, her pride and joy. She is the only person in the whole of Copper who still calls him Rutilius and not Rat. "Copper is on show to the rest of Panem and we wouldn't want to let the side down now, would we?"

Rat ponders how him not standing straight is in any way letting the side down. Nobody will be able to see him anyway, and does it matter what they look like? To Gaius, who goes into the Neon sector every Saturday night and stumbles home hungover around midday every Sunday, maybe it does. But Rat is too young to go into Neon and do whatever it is his bigger brother does there and for now his life is working out more ways to not go to school and you don't need to look good for that. There is no use telling his mother any of this. She would only say it is important not to show how hard we work - 'we' being Gaius, Marcus and his father, because Rat is supposed to be Making Something Of Himself - and that we are Capitol citizens and shall act properly.

He looks for Marcus. Gaius is the handsome one and he, Rat, is the One Who Will Be Something and so Marcus is the invisible one. Marcus could wear his father's bright orange formal suit and still manage to be invisible. People chat to Gaius and go on to ruffle Rat's hair, getting more unruly every passing week, without even noticing Marcus. He has started to put gel on it to tame it and today, specially for the reaping, the family Avox showed him how to use the straightening irons so that now it tickles his chin. If he was wearing his overalls he would be able to feel it on his shoulders too.

He has fallen behind, so he runs a few steps to catch up before his mother notices. The hems of his suit catch on the cobbles but you don't get a nickname like Rat unless you're light on your feet and he hardly even falters. Gaius gives him a huge holo-star grin.

"Looking good, baby bro. Those girls in the pens are going to want to eat you all up!"

Gaius always talks to him like this, as though he's still eight instead of going on fourteen. "Looks like one of them's been eating you," he snaps back, pleased when Gaius flushes and turns up his collar to hide the tell-tale bruise.