Who: Tony Stark (and his backup singers). What: Narrative. Where: Victors' Village, District Five. When: The night before the Reaping.
Leaning out this second-story window, Tony could see - over the tops of the stunted, anemic trees that had no doubt been struggling to serve their ornamental purpose in this thin, sandy soil for seventy-five years - a considerable distance into the north and west. Beyond the long, vaguely crescent-shaped island that was occupied in its entirely by District Five's Victors' Village, the land was all flat and patchy plain. On the east bank of the River Misery (shit name for a river - apt, though) the town spread out, low and dull. Some miles upstream, the dam caught the last brilliance of the sunset, its dozen spouts of white, raging, frothing water shining like columns, as silent and as motionless from this vantage point as stone.
It was the evening before the Reaping. At long last, he was getting that look at his house in District Five he'd been wanting - here it was. Check. Some view, huh? By the time the sun hit this angle again, his plans could all be so much mist, evaporated entirely or at least rerouted in the most inconvenient way. All he could do was wait to hear which name was called in the square that lay across the river - to see if Anthony Stark was going to throw a wrench in everything.
Like father, like son. What a fucking riot.
He set his glass of wine on the windowsill and hopped up to sit beside it, swinging one leg carefully over the side to hang outside the house. The bottle stood on the floor, brushing his ankle. He'd brought it from home, of course - who knew what they had on offer, here? - and it was perfect. Black pepper and tough, leathery fruit, the kind that could weather years in a frigid cellar waiting to be found; body that stood up to you, that demanded attention, that rewarded attempts at easy drinking with a well-deserved hand around your throat; enough alcohol that loosened muscles came on almost like an aftertaste. It was the kind of wine you made friends with over the course of several hours, as it changed, as it changed you. He wanted to take a bath in it and not get out. Was there any denying that he had lived well? He'd tasted so many things; he'd seen so much; he'd met so many people; he had done pretty much everything he could think to want to do. Sure, he hadn't traveled as much as some - but he'd traveled enough to know that most places weren't worth seeing. He hadn't knocked Stane's teeth out, but he'd told him he wanted to, often and repeatedly. He hadn't, he supposed, "lived free."
But if he was being honest with himself, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to tell the difference. What would he have changed? Some mornings when he'd had to crawl to the bathroom, his body screaming with toxins, might have been avoided - but then again, he'd done that to himself any number of times, just with slightly different chemistry.
No, he'd lived well. And he'd done good. Look what he'd given Jarvis. He'd seen people looking at it; he'd watched the realization soften their faces, he'd waited - and not been disappointed - for the surprise, the emotion, the admiration that followed. He'd sucked it down like oysters on the half-shell. And more than that, of course, it had given him Jarvis. He clung to that. He hung a lot of weight on it, as the sun was setting and the white of the dam winked out into grey. Because, really, that could have been enough for him - a hell of a lot less could have been enough for him. He knew, he kept telling himself, that he had to keep moving, because there was a chance to get him out of all of this, because if there was something better out there for him, Tony should give it to him. But hadn't he already given him more than he ever could have hoped for? (Because you took all his hope away, the last time you waltzed yourself into this mess.) Hadn't he done pretty well?
There was a chill in the air, but he didn't move to shut the window - the breeze picked up, gusting slightly, but he didn't anchor his glass. What would he get to watch tomorrow, before the cameras cut on in Five? Two would be interesting; Three would be important. He would miss Seven; Eight - not that there was much suspense, there. He would miss Eleven; Twelve. … But only if his name was picked. And so many people seemed so very sure that it wouldn't be. It was easy to swing himself around to their way of thinking, to let himself try and rationalize his way into safety. They were probably right, after all. If Stane wanted to kill him, all he had to do was sit back and wait. And then - it was Clint's voice that offered up these cheerful reassurances, for whatever reason - he was incredibly useful. No one could do what he did. How many people could claim to be as talented, as innovative, as integral to the very fiber of the state? How many people had served as long as he had, and with such grand results? If he wasn't reaped, which he surely wouldn't be, he could leave all of this behind him without consequence. He could live out his life with Jarvis, who would come to understand. In the end, he'd be on his side. He might be disappointed, but - and he could hear it in Jarvis' flat, dry, articulated drawl - he was quite accustomed to disappointing people, wasn't he; it would hardly be a lethal blow. And maybe some of his friends would be spared, too. Maybe one of them would make it out. Maybe, maybe, maybe …
Maybe not. Could he really just walk away? Apparently, he was the reason this entire mess hadn't been resolved decades ago, and wasn't that just perfect. He could hear Rogers spelling it out for him as clearly as if he'd been right there at his shoulder: if you hadn't been such a selfish prick, if you hadn't been so desperate for attention, never mind that you had literally every other thing you ever wanted - if you hadn't needed to be the center of everyone's universe, maybe the children of Panem would have milk and penny candy and a chicken in every pot (such were the things he imagined Rogers must enjoy), and I could have been a farmer, or something equally fucking wholesome, whose highest pleasure would be dispensing prudish, sanctimonious advice to my neighbors at market, before going home to my eight insufferably well-mannered children and going to bed at sunset - instead of being a gigantic pain in your ass. And he made a good point, Rogers. When supplied with the necessary lyrics, he could really carry a tune.
But - all right. So what? If his dad hadn't been such a colossal dick, they could both have had nice things. So this was kind of Tony's fault, okay. So he had kind of set the revolution back by twenty-five years. What about it? That didn't give him any more of an obligation to fix things than it gave anyone else whose fault it was - there were countless other people who shared the blame. And look what they were doing: squat. Jack shit. At least he was trying. At least he was putting himself out there. He was doing everything he could. He was doing plenty.
It was Natasha he heard, making her reply: Oh, I'm sorry - did you want a cookie?
Yes. Yes, he wanted a goddamn baker's dozen. Look what he'd been though - look what lay ahead of him. See how hard he'd have to work, if he didn't get tossed into the Arena. Count how many lives were in his hands, and how few he'd ever asked to hold. Someone, someone say thank you, for fuck's sake.
The anger was nice, the indignation was sweet, the self-congratulation and the hope were so, so seductive. They filled him up and intoxicated him, they painted over the deficiency of the flat, dark horizon as the weak stars started flickering into the sky, they warmed the nothingness of the night that was creeping across the plains. They were invigorating, colorful, intricate, and endlessly sustaining. They were all he needed to keep himself going.
And they were all in other people's voices.
He sat there, straddling the windowsill, silent and alone. The hollow sound of the wind over the river resonated with something in his chest, like the perfect note that could shatter glass or pulverize bedrock. He drank until the bottle was empty, tipping the last, too-chilled dregs of it into his mouth, and watching the shards of tannic precipitate drift back into the curve of the glass like tea leaves. He rolled the bottle between his hands. He hummed idly over the void of it to make it sing - a deep, flat, thrumming monotone. No. No, he couldn't walk away.
For a second, he felt he hardly had the energy to so much as stand up and go inside - but he did, creaking his way out of the window frame with a grimace and a roll of his shoulders. He chafed his hands together, blowing into them as he headed downstairs to find another bottle to take to bed. He might lose these things very soon, and that was all the more reason to revel in them now. There had always been more than enough people out there ready and willing to punish him, and he saw no reason to add to that number; every day was an orchard that was his and every night was a fucking party, and the person who wanted to take that from him could pry it from his cold, dead hands. Preferably a very long time from now.