A bunch of ficlets...

[stainless]

...but not Transformers.

I'm kind of on hiatus from writing for TF fandom lately. Working on some original fiction that's inspired by TF characters somewhat, but not really in the roboty mood lately.

I saw the Hunger Games movie recently, and found myself landing in that fandom after a comment thread on the books turned into me writing commentfic for someone who was nice to me. Then ficlets happened. (Well, the first is almost a fic -- I cut off "ficlet" in my head at 1k, and it's about 900.) And wouldn't stop happening.

Not sure if I'll stay in that fandom for as long as I've been in TF, and I definitely think I'll go back to robot-ing at some point. Because Starscream is too damn sassy to stay away from, and Megatron is Megatron.

But! Nifty stuff that I had fun writing!

These were originally posted to themockingjay. They are all unbetaed.

Title: Edge
Characters/Pairing: Cato/Clove
Rating: T for violence
Contains: Brief description of violence.
Word Count: a bit under 1k
Summary: Cato's thoughts on a certain knife-wielding fellow Career-in-training.

The worst thing about Training is the girls.

At least, if you like girls. Some guys don't, and before last year I might have beat them up, less because I care and more because it's an excuse to pound somebody. But some guys did that to someone last year and he went fucking berserk. If security hadn't got there in time he would've killed all three of them. He said it was his business and they were gonna shut up about it and if they didn't he'd make them. Forever.

He cracked one of their skulls. Blood everywhere. They saved that girl, though. Not that she was useful any more, not when her head took so much fixing and they couldn't put most of it right anyway.

But you're not allowed to kill anyone. Not until you get to the Games. Not officially.

It's a big thing, according to your trainers. The thing you're waiting for. The thing you practice for hours and hours and days and days and years and years. Until you're hungry, starving, and you want to feel it, and you want to win for real.

So they couldn't let the girl die. If he'd managed to kill her before they got there it would've been fine. But no. Damn fool was just too mad at them for calling him a name to finish quickly.

As for me, I won't say what I've done and what I haven't. I will say what I'm waiting for. And that girls are a distraction.

If they're bad, they're just embarrassing. Makes things easier, I guess, if they need killing. But it makes the District look bad. And you too, if you trained with some idiot.

But if they're good, it's worse. Because you watch them and it's like looking in a mirror, seeing them become what you want to be. And you can't get it out by winning against them in sparring, or outscoring them in weapons. Because if they win, they're better than you, and if they're not, they just aren't good enough.

Most of us try to pretend they don't exist. Or see them as meat, but that gets some people in trouble, because they hate them all from there on out. It's the same for them with us.

I don't know what it was like for that gay guy. He volunteered, but he didn't win. Some people say they know why. I think I don't. I think he was crazy, and that kind of crazy is the kind of crazy that just might have meant he'd win.

The same crazy as this one girl. I can't stop thinking about her, and I don't even know why. The only things she loves are her knives, and she likes them too damn much. I've seen her throw and never miss. That just means she's good. Maybe a little obsessed with her favorite weapon, but that's all right. Makes you something to watch.

But then... there was that one time. That time I saw her alone.

I don't even know what I was doing. It was after the girls' practice, which was after ours, and for some reason I found myself hanging around. I'd meant to find someone to spar with until I was tired, because the crazy girl made me nervous even then. Instead, I found her.

And a roomful of dummies with knives in their plastic hearts, red dye bleeding out of them. They're made of some strong plastic and you can't do much to them, unless it's hit a vital target, deep. Most have lots of them. These only had the one. She'd done everything she was supposed to do.

But she kept going. Carving designs into the plastic. She was squatting on one she'd knocked down, perched like some kind of beast on top of the thing. Barefoot. Red dye all over her feet.

Her knife was clean. Not the one she'd thrown through its fake heart. A new one. For her designs.

There was no fake blood from the patterns she was making, of course. Nothing to leak out from under them.

So they were just there. Just patterns. With no purpose at all. No objective. No excuse. If they'd had fake veins full of the stuff she could pretend she meant for them to bleed out quicker, maybe. But no.

I've seen a lot of things. I've seen strategy that means you do the most gruesome thing you can and I've felt the things inside that makes it feel damn good. That means it makes you strong. Fierce. Deadly. Fearless. Unstoppable. All those things we tell ourselves we are and try our hardest to live up to. For the glory of our District. For the reason we're alive.

This was different.

She saw me. I don't know how. Maybe she looked over her shoulder, quick. But I think I would've seen. She's small and a girl and I'm a big guy, so she moves faster. But I don't miss anything.

Sometimes I think she saw my reflection in the knife she was holding. Like I said, it was clean. And she held it up for a second and looked at it, while she decided where to cut him -- it -- next.

That's crazy, but so's she.

She said one thing, "Hello," and her lips spread out in this smile that I should probably have recognized, from the hunger in it. I should've attacked, right then.

Instead I stood there. Then I said "Hi."

That was all.

I'm lucky she's crazy. I'm lucky she likes carving dummies up and probably people and that she'll probably never smile at a guy like that if she isn't cutting on someone.

Because I know from training she's good, and I know from seeing this she's good enough.

I'm lucky she's crazy.

Because if she's crazy, I've got no reason to like that smile.

No reason to hope that smile wasn't just about that dummy she was... playing with.

If she's crazy...

...I've got no reason to hope that smile was for me.

Title: Mercy
Character: Seneca Crane
Rating: PG I suppose -- it's a bit dark, but there's no explicit violence
Contains: Spoilers for the end of the first book, and a minor spoiler for the second book/for something at the end of the movie.
Word Count: 552
Summary: Why Seneca Crane made his decision at the end of the 74th Games. The motives imputed to him in canon never quite sat right with me, so I decided to play around with it a bit. This thing is the result.

The moment the girl whispers, he knows what she will do.

He knows what he will do, as well, and what it will bring.

His hands twitch. He wants to bury his face in them, but he refuses to let himself. He's not the one being aired on every television screen in Panem, no, but he's still being recorded.

And if there's one thing he knows for sure, it's that someone will review this moment.

She opens the pouch and the others watch, as mesmerized as the crowds that all are watching. They say nothing. It's not the first dramatic suicide.

When she spills half of the poisonous berries into the other tribute's palm, they start talking. When she spills the other half into her own, they only get louder. "She can't do that!" "It's an outrage!" "I know just the thing for those two --"

The tributes raise their berries to their lips. He holds up his hand. It gives him something to do, other than visibly break.

"They both live," he says.

The room around him gasps and so will the entire country in less than a minute.

He knows what they will think. He knows what they will say. That these two kids from District 12, of all places, have wormed their way into the hearts of all Panem so successfully that even the Head Gamemaker can't bring himself to blow them away.

He sees someone's hand, still hovering over a button, and he knows when he shakes his head that it's pressed already anyway. Only the one that burns will be him.

His hand and his head lower at once. He hears the voice of the announcer, frantic, surprised. The perfect, measured voice that always speaks so evenly of deathtraps masquerading as rewards quivers. The speaker knows how to talk of horror, not of mercy.

That will be the legacy he leaves behind: Mercy. Mercy that destroys him, and possibly everything else.

But it isn't mercy that leads him to this. That's the only thing that bothers him, more than the death he's sure he'll face, maybe within minutes. That they will think these children trapped him, that in the end he became as weak in the face of the spectacle as the people he's offered it up to.

He cares nothing for these two children. He cares only for the Game.

The weeks that the audience have followed, delighted or enraptured or enthralled or simply unable to look away. The time they've invested in their favorites and their favorite's greatest rival, their hearts in their throats as they waited for the next bit of ingenuity or spray of bloodshed. All the things that kept them watching.

It couldn't end with nothing. Better it end with two than with emptiness. With everyone, District or Capitol, old or young, man or woman or boy or girl, defiant or obedient model citizen, wondering why any of it had happened in the first place.

He knows what too much hope will bring. He fears it, even as he gazes from one face to another, sees them all nod to him in understanding and farewell.

But there are those who burn with too much hope... and those who see, at the end of it all, that they have none at all, and never have.

He knows what will happen now. What might overtake his world.

But he also knows what would be worse.

Title: Waking
Characters: Haymitch, Katniss, Effie
Rating: PG I suppose
Word Count: 550 or so
Warnings: None, really.
Summary: The reaping for the 74th Games, from Haymitch's perspective.  

The only thing a victor knows is how to survive.

He hasn't forgotten, not through all these years. He does what he must, and damn the consequences. By the time he stumbles to the Reaping he cannot remember the number seventy-four, or who the brightly colored woman is mincing around the stage. He knows everyone is looking at him, because he can feel the weight of their staring, and the despair behind it.

The hell with them, he thinks. He weaves toward the woman as if her shimmer could be his shield. He knows it can't, but he's past caring. He reaches out his arms for her, grabbing at the flash of bright color, like a child would, not knowing where it comes from or what it means.

She gives a startled little squeak, covers it hastily in a cough, and backs away, clutching at her hair before it falls. He grumbles, but he's not angry.

After all, he was never innocent.

Everything is a blur, a monotony, a nightmare so long lived through he remembers to ignore it. When the first name is called, he feels nothing but the liquor in his belly. It might just come back up soon, but he really doesn't mind. It's there, and that's good, and who cares if he throws up, anyway? That's not the worst of this.

Then he hears it -- a cry, breaking through the layers he's wrapped around himself, reaching the ears that long ago turned all this into a murmur and a joke.

His ears open up like they only ever do when he's sober and dreaming and the words they pick up are a horror even his dreams don't fashion for him:

I volunteer. I volunteer as tribute.

He moans like a wounded animal, hearing it, clear too clear through his drunken haze, but some part of him likes the pain.

He watches the girl step up. She's Seam and she's skinny, but not as much as some, and there's something in her gray eyes that used to be in his until he lost it and he has the wild thought that maybe he dropped it and she picked it up again.

He reminds himself that's crazy, crazy as this girl, but then the whole District's gone mad along with her, because they're not clapping and making nice, they're pressing their hands to their lips and holding them out to her, like they understand.

The next thing he knows he's gotten to his feet, laughing a little because there's nothing else to do. "Look at her!" he hoots, because he can't stop staring at her himself and it's probably been ten years since he's looked at anything that wasn't in his dreams. "Look at this one!"

He even says "I like her!" and praises her spunk. It makes him wild inside, and he wants to laugh again but doesn't, and the next thing he knows he's pointing a finger at the camera and he could almost be the boy he used to be, for a second.

Then he remembers that's a curse.

He belches theatrically and staggers right off the stage. He hits the ground and groans, because apparently things still hurt.

He can't hear the Capitol laughing, not here, but he knows it's happening and passes out, relieved.