Everyone knows what happens to the One girls who win, at least the ones who don't manage to find alternatives - and even for those ones it can be too late, if they don't do it quick enough. District One has more female victors than anyone other than Two - not that Two even counts, really, they're just monsters with weapons who don't understand strategy or sacrifice, who get drugs and ice cream after the Games - but a disproportionately low number of female mentors.
Natasha watches them every year. She can't pinpoint the year she understood anymore, but the memory of when things clicked is burned into her mind now, the details of it. The beautiful, giggling girl who wore next to nothing at her interview, who smirked and simpered as she drove the blade into Four boy's groin, who licked the blade clean after slitting the throat of the tiny girl from Seven - they saw her after the interviews, once more at the Victory Tour where she was pale and trying too hard, and then never again.
"Do you think they kill the girls?" Natasha asks. The thought chills her like the time Clint put ice down her spine and she punched him until his nose bled.
"They can't kill all the girls, what about Cashmere?" Clint points out. She's a newer mentor, and she's crazy, but it's true, she's alive. She's the only female mentor Natasha can think of. "Plus they need babies. Maybe they take them away and lock them up and use them to make a baby factory."
"You don't even know where babies come from," Natasha scoffs, and hits him, hard. She does, and she knows she never wants that to happen to her, not ever. It's why she didn't tell Clint as soon as she found out like she does with everything else. He hits her back and they scuffle and forget all the conversations after that.
But then a few years later is another One girl, brilliant and glorious and Natasha watches every minute of her Games, rapt and breathless. She's about twelve, maybe, and this girl is a ravishing sixteen, all curves and curls and sinuous movement. When she stops to wash off the blood after the initial battle of the cornucopia, stripping down in front of the camera something happens in Natasha's stomach and shoots down in a way that makes her gasp.
"Did you feel that?" she asks Clint, but when she looks over he has his hands over his eyes. "What's wrong with you?"
"She's naked," Clint complains. "I don't want to see that."
Natasha has always known that Clint was weird, but she didn't know he was weird. Oh well. She smothers him with a pillow so he won't have to look and turns back to the screen because hey, more for her.
The girl who wins, her name is Tourmaline, and on stage with Caesar it's all flirtatious smiles and touches and shoulder lifts that Natasha practices in the mirror because maybe one day she'll grow up to be that beautiful, that confident and wonderful and the world will be hers, too.
Until one day Natasha maybe a year or so later is surfing the news channels - not the ones that go out to the rest of the Capitol, but the special ones, the ones that Fury lets them see because they're special and will grow up to be special - and she sees Tourmaline's body in an alleyway. She's not beautiful now; her hair is scraggly and she has marks all up her arms, dots and scratches and small bruises with pinpricks in the middle. Her makeup is exaggerated, clownish even, and Natasha doesn't know why they would have done that when she looks the most flawless on her own.
What's worse are the bruises ringing her neck because in the Arena she was stung by a tracker jacker and her district partner tried to strangle her and she killed him, so how could anyone not another victor kill her that way? And then the person talking on the screen says something about 'rape' which is a word Natasha knows is something evil, but not until she looks is up does she get it. She spends an hour paging through photos and Peacekeeper reports and survivor testimonies in horror until she's a shaking, sobbing mess but she can't look away until Coulson finds her.
He swears, rips the computer's power cord from the wall and takes Natasha to the gym where they spend the rest of the day fighting. Coulson shows her more ways to disable an attacker using the groin than she thought was possible, and he doesn't try to touch her or hug her, which is good because Natasha thinks she might rip off his arm if he did.
She avoids Clint for three days, ignoring the way his jaw clenches and his face gets full of hurt because she just, she can't. But finally he comes to their room and stands in the door and says, "I don't like girls."
Natasha looks up at him. "What?"
He crosses his arms, fingers tight against his biceps. "You heard me. I - I like boys. I think. I mean, I don't think about it much. But Coulson told me about - and I thought about it and. Boys. Not girls." Clint takes a breath and she can see him making himself brave. "And not you, anyway. You smell."
"I don't smell!" Natasha snaps, aghast. "Unless you mean soap, and you'd know that if you ever took a bath."
Clint pulls down his eyelid at her and Natasha tackles him and they give each other black eyes and after that they collapse and fall asleep together like they always do, but Natasha never forgets. She knows why they have no female Ones. She'll do anything to make sure that doesn't happen to her.
They join the official District One training centre the same year, and while the other girls are doing their best to be strong and pretty and capable, Natasha makes sure they know she's deadly. Gone are the pouts and the over-the-shoulder glances and hair tosses that she practiced before Tourmaline died. Natasha fights with precision, never wasting a movement, and the other girls glare at her and the boys back away and the trainers notice, and that's what she wants.
She'd also like not to be curvy, or even really look like a girl at all, but nature has other plans. By fourteen Natasha is stunning, and short of carving up her face with a knife there's nothing she can do about it. She joined the Centre with a buzz cut but they make her grow it out, and of course it's bright red and curls around her face in waves, and they dress her in all black to set it off.
The first time a boy lays a hand on her, sliding it around her waist with a lascivious grin and a question about what she's doing later, Natasha breaks all his fingers, one by one, and drives them into his eyes until they burst. The trainers pull her aside and tell her it's best not to leave injuries they can't fix, but that's all they do, and they let her off the hook just this once. The boy gets a cane and a dog.
You can't choose your image. That's what the trainers tell them on day one; it's their job because they know what they're doing and this is what they've done for years. You can't choose your image but Natasha is damn well going to choose hers, and she reads all the files on her to make sure it's going to plan. Everything goes well until she's fifteen and in line to be the volunteer next year, and that's when she sees it: the contracts and negotiations to open a bidding war on her virginity.
Well. Only one way to fix that.
"No," Clint says when she corners him. "No! I'm your friend, I'm not doing that to you."
"You think I want to?" Natasha snaps, and she's angry and scared enough that she slams the wall with her fist. "If you don't do this they're going to sell me, do you understand? They're going to sell me to some creep who has the most money and I won't be allowed to kill him, and they'll fill me full of drugs and I'll wind up dead in an alley like Tourmaline because I can't take it anymore, so you are going to do this for me, okay? Because if you don't I'm going to put drugs in Coulson's coffee."
Clint's angle is forgettable, they tell him; he's not pretty or striking but he's silent and deadly, and his job will be to back up whichever girl he goes into the Arena with to make sure she wins. Like hell he will. He's going to get out because he's the same as Natasha; he knows what's important and what's important is that they both make it out and they make it out sane.
"Okay," he says, and it's shaky but he knows what he has to do. Tears fill his eyes and he wipes them away, but it's okay because Natasha's vision swims, too. Clint is a soldier, just like Natasha. They can do this. "Tell me what I have to do."
They have to get caught, first of all. They have to get caught where people can see them, not just the trainers but other people, and they have to make it look like they did it because they wanted to, because they're just so - well, not in love, but young kids making mistakes because they're curious, that's not so weird. But they also have to make themselves invaluable first, because last year a pair got carried away and she got kicked out for not having the right priorities, or so the trainers said. Natasha's sure it's because the girl was pretty and they couldn't sell used goods, because the boy got to stay.
In the end they choose the training room right before morning session, and they leave their workout clothes half on because they can pretend they just got caught up during a sparring session. They huddle together in the dark, listening for the footsteps that means the trainers and the other kids are coming.
"Ready?" Natasha asks in a whisper, her fingers digging into Clint's shoulders.
"No," he whispers back. He's shaking, and Natasha rolls them over so his back is against the floor because honestly, it'll be easier this way.
"It's okay," Natasha says, and she presses her forehead to his bared shoulder. They've known each other since they were babies. This is gross and wrong and it's the opposite of everything she wants from life but they can do this. They can. "I love you, loser."
"I love you, jerk," Clint says, and there are tears behind his voice but he's holding them back. Then the voices, and the footfalls, and it's time.
They get caught, all right, and Natasha gets her first real actually-discipline-beating since joining up, but they don't get thrown out, and that's the important thing.
She doesn't expect to get called in before Fury, whose expression is unreadable like always. "We have a problem," he says, and Natasha swallows but keeps her expression still. "What happened with you and Barton. You want to tell me what that was about?"
He knows, he has to know, but Fury always likes to hear them say it. "They were going to sell me," Natasha says, and the words taste like sick in her mouth but they have no power over her, not anymore. "I couldn't let them." Fury continues to stare at her, impassive, and her throat closes and she adds a hasty "sir" and kicks herself for forgetting.
"I see," Fury says. "Natasha, tell me something. Where were you and Barton before I found you?"
"In the orphanage, sir."
"That's right. And who brought you out of there?"
"You did, sir."
"Right again. And who trained you into the best damn soldiers this district will ever see?"
"You did, sir."
"I'm beginning to sense a pattern." Fury stares her down and sweat trickles between Natasha's shoulder blades. "Now could please tell me what in the hell made you think I was going to let them do that?"
Natasha huffs out a breath, and the air escapes her in a wheeze and tears prick her eyes and she can't keep her posture anymore. "At ease," Fury says, and nods toward a chair. Natasha knows she should stand but she can't, and she collapses into it and grips the arms. "It's done now, and I'll make it work, but if you don't trust me to the extent where you'd put yourself and Barton through that, then we have a bigger problem than what the trainers think they have planned for you."
"I trust you, sir."
"Do you?" Fury raises his eyebrows. "Because going out and traumatizing yourself and Barton all to hell and nearly getting yourself kicked out rather than waiting for my instructions doesn't sound like trust to me."
Fear flutters in Natasha's chest, and she does her best to clamp it down. Not fear of Fury - Natasha's earliest memory is of this gigantic man, dark and silent as a shadow, lifting her into one arm and Clint in the other, and he could throttle her within an inch of her life and she'd never be afraid - but of failing him. Disappointing him. "I'm sorry," she says, and the words wrench themselves from her and bury themselves in her chest.
"Don't apologize, just don't do it again," Fury says. "Your job is to sit back and let me fix this, you hear me?"
"Yes, sir."
"And tell Barton he's not a monster because I don't think the kid's stopped crying since it happened."
Natasha winces. "Yes, sir."
"Good. Dismissed."
Natasha takes a second outside to lean against the wall, one hand over her face, to regain her composure. Fury's on her side. He's always on her side. And now instead of putting his plan in motion he has to clean up her mess. At least it's Fury so Natasha's confident he has another plan, but still. No more of that.
She finds Clint in the gym, shooting arrows at the target until he can't hit the bulls-eye anymore because the new arrows can't make their way through the forest of ones already in the target. "Hey, loser!" Natasha calls out. "Fury told me you're crying. He gave me special orders to wipe your nose and make sure you blow."
Clint whirls around and fires an arrow just past Natasha's head; she doesn't blink. "Shut up," Clint says, and his eyes are red but it's not affecting his shooting, so that's something.
"He gave me a special-order hankie to do it with," Natasha says. "It's got roses on it. And lotion so it doesn't make your poor little nose red."
"You're a bitch today, is it that time of the month?" Clint snorts and wipes his nose on his arm. He clenches his jaw like always.
Natasha can still feel him inside her sometimes, when she tries to sleep, and it makes her sick, literally, heaving until there's nothing left in her stomach, but she's not the only one. She knows they should keep bantering, but she can't keep it up anymore. And even though her skin crawls at the thought of touch, well, too bad, and Natasha crosses the room, ignoring Clint's glare and flinch, and pulls him in for a hug.
The hug brings back the memories Natasha has tried to shove away, and both of them shudder but they don't let go. Natasha clings harder and the bow digs into her shoulder and Clint's fingers are going to leave bruises on her arms. Finally she pulls away, rubs the tears from Clint's face with her hands as he does the same to her.
"Hey, we did it," she says. "We didn't die."
"Yeah," Clint agrees, and lets out a breath. "Never again?"
"Never again."
Later, Natasha taps into the feed of Fury's office - the password is trustme and Natasha smiles - and watches him give the trainers his advice. "You were going about it wrong with this one. You should look on this as a blessing, really, because now it's not too late to change your strategy."
"I don't see what you mean. We can't use her if she's been spoiled."
"Not if you sell her like something they can use, no. But that would be a waste of her talents, and I think you know that. What you do is pitch her appeal the other way around. Instead of the client fantasizing about what he can do to her, this time it's what she can do to them. They pay you to tell her to call the shots."
Natasha narrows her eyes. That could work, if they actually give her the free rein. She waits to hear the response.
"That's giving her a lot of power."
"Not if that's what they're paying for. If you think that's a niche market I'm afraid you haven't done your research."
"We'll think about it," they say, and that's when Natasha knows he's won.
It's not as good as never being sold at all, but Natasha knows this is the best Fury can do if he wants to keep her in - if she wants to stay in - and they do. At least this means she can be in control, and that means no one is going to drug her and leave her in an alley. If the sick fucks want someone to tie them up and whip them and choke them, Natasha will be happy to do it.
The new girl has blonde hair, a gorgeous smile, and thinks she has a clue but she doesn't. Natasha hasn't had her breath taken away like this since Tourmaline and she stamps it down, hard. This one is pretty, and Natasha knows without being told that they'll dress her in see-through gauze and silk and glitter, that she'll giggle for the cameras and bite her lip and every man in the audience will think about what she'll be like underneath him.
Natasha can't get involved in that. Not again. But then at lunch New Girl starts talking about her little sisters, how the littlest one has a kitten that she never lets go of and the middle ones likes to twirl until she falls down, and Natasha snaps. She grabs New Girl by her wrist until the bones crunch beneath her fingers, and she ignores the girl's squawks and protests and slams her up against the wall outside.
"You shut up about your family, you shut up right now," Natasha hisses, all in her face, teeth bared.
New Girl's eyes are wide but she doesn't flinch, and she struggles to get free. "What's it matter to you, huh?"
"Nothing," Natasha spits out. "If you want to have the rest of your life controlled because you were stupid enough to give them the ammo against you on day-fucking-one, I should just walk away. And after this that's what I'm gonna do, and if you don't listen to me then fine, but don't hear me say I told you so."
She lets go and stalks away, shaking and furious with herself. That's it, Natasha tells herself. No more.
If only.
Every guy in the place who isn't gay or dead has his eye on her, even the trainers, and it's so bad that Coulson actually has to send around a memo reminding everyone that anyone who touches her will find themselves transferred to the coal mines in Twelve so fast they won't have time to kill themselves from the shame. Natasha reads it and has to put her head down on the desk.
There won't be any magical Clint miracles with New Girl. They make sure of that. When she joins up they pull her into the office and tell her right away that first week that if she does anything - anything - with any of the boys then not only is she out of the program but they're selling her to the highest bidder right now. It'll be a shame to lose someone with potential like her but they will, because if they can't sell the virgin whore then they can sell the shit out of the broken doll. Natasha watches the video, watches New Girl's face as it pales and her eyes widen before she rearranges it in a pretty smile and gives them a wink, says of course she understands.
That afternoon Natasha spends the whole of training sending weapon after weapon into the training dummies' crotches. She watches the boys wince and cover their groins with their hands and it doesn't even make her feel better.
And it's worse because New Girl has caught Marvel's eye, and Marvel is a disgusting pig-fucking flea-ridden son-of-a-bitch that Natasha wishes, oh she wishes he'd make a move because she would kill him and love every minute of it. Fury's already taken her out on missions and she knows how to do it fast or slow, painless or excruciating and everything in between, and she knows what she'd do with him.
She hates Marvel because he has something to prove, and in One that's always dangerous. She hates him because he's a dick with a power complex, because he's skinnier than the other boys and can't pack on the muscle no matter how many steroids they give him, and he takes it out on everyone else. He's a straight boy who enjoys tormenting the ones who might not be, and Natasha's lost track of how many times he gets a younger boy up against the wall, I bet you like to take it up the ass, I bet you beg for it like a whore, and hey maybe if I fucked you right now you'd have a cunt after all, hey, what do you say.
He does it with Clint once - you look like you like sucking dick, I bet you'd get down on your knees and beg me to choke you with it, you wanna suck my dick loverboy - and Clint punches him in the face and yells "Fuck you, I'd bite it off first!" and Marvel is such an idiot that he thinks this is a good thing, that Clint's all right. And he swaggers around the training room leering at all the girls he's not allowed to touch and tells them, someday. Someday.
And then he looks at New Girl, training on the pull-up bars in a sports bra and shorts, her skin glowing and shiny with sweat, and he leans against the pole. "Hey, you're not bad," he says, eyeing her, and she ignores him and continues counting. "I hope you win, you little slut. I'm gonna save up my winnings from my Games and then I'll take you home, what do you think?"
Natasha loses it. She pulls her sword out of the stomach of the training dummy she's just skewered and stalks toward Marvel, grabbing another weapon on the way. "Hey!" she shouts, and his head snaps up. New Girl loses her count and hangs from the bars, staring. "Hey, asshole, you gonna back that up?"
She throws him the sword and he laughs, rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. "What, you gonna buy her first?" he asks, and Natasha could kill him, right here, right now. "That's totally hot. Will you let me watch?"
He doesn't joke about buying Natasha because the first time he tried it she let loose a knife that landed two inches from where his brain clearly is, and he's not going to do that again. Still, Marvel is angry and knows he'll never be the volunteer - everyone does - and he just never knows when to quit.
They fight, and Natasha wins. She pins him down and puts her sword across his throat. "Yeah, you like that, fucker?" she demands. "How 'bout I fuck you with my sword, huh, would you like that? Just turn you over right here and fuck you with it until you bleed to death. Tell me you'd like that."
Marvel's eyes are wide and crazed, too crazy to be scared, and he spits in Natasha's face. She doesn't bother to wipe it away, just presses the sword closer to his skin. She sees the trainers watching, idly; they know when a kid is going to kill, and they know she won't. "Fuck you, bitch!" he shouts. "I'll fuck you with my spear, see how you like that?"
"I'd love to see you try," Natasha says, leaning in but not close enough that he could bite her if he tried. "No, you know what, you're always talking big at the other boys about how much they like dick. I think you're overcompensating. I think you like dick. Why don't you tell us all how much you like it?"
"Fuck you!" Marvel says again, and Natasha shifts her weight, pins his legs with one foot and lowers her knee onto his crotch. He lets out a strangled shout and she presses down farther, digs her knee in and twists it.
"Say it!" Natasha demands. "Say you like sucking dick! Tell us how much you love to choke on it, how much you'd love some big strong man to hold you down and make you take it!"
He lasts longer than she'd give him credit for, she'll give him that, but that's always the way it goes with the crazy ones who have an axe to grind. Natasha keeps putting more weight on her knee until finally Marvel gasps, tears and snot streaming down his face. "I like sucking dick!" he screams finally, and he repeats what Natasha tells him, sobbing and cursing all the way, and finally she moves off him, straddling his waist instead.
"What a good boy," Natasha coos, and she takes a knife from her belt and drags it down his face, not hard enough to break the skin but only just. "Now you touch her again and next time I'll make you do what we now know you really want."
"Fuck you, you fucking cunt," Marvel gasps out, curling in on himself. "Fuck you. One day I'll have her and I'll make you watch, I swear to fucking god, I'll tape it for you and send it to you, express post."
"No," Natasha says seriously, "you won't." And she bashes him in the temple with the pommel of her sword and he goes limp.
"That's what we call 'excessive force', Nat," calls a trainer when Natasha saunters past, but she just winks at him.
Clint runs after her, grabs her arm in the hallway. "What the fuck was that about?" he hisses. "I mean, I don't like Marvel either, but what the fuck?"
"He's a nasty piece of shit who needs to be taught a lesson, that's all," Natasha says, and Clint shakes his head.
"No, that's what it was when he did that to me," he says. "You let me handle it because if I didn't he'd never let it go. But this -" His eyes widen. "Wait, are you -"
"Shut up," Natasha says, and she sticks her finger in his face. "Don't you say a word. Don't even start. I don't talk about you making moon-eyes over trainer what's-his-name, do I, so you keep your damn mouth shut."
Hurt flashes over Clint's face, but he knows when not to push it. "All right," he says. "But this isn't going anywhere good. I know it and you know it."
"I know." Natasha presses a hand to her eyes, palm digging into the socket. "Fuck, I know."
"Want to raid Fury's private stash?" Clint asks, and the anger drains from his voice.
"Hell yes," Natasha says, and leans against his shoulder.
New Girl finds Natasha later, after dinner. Natasha is a little bit tipsy from the excursion into Fury's liquor cabinet, and she doesn't have the self-control to deal with this. "Go away," she says. Marvel is in the infirmary. Apparently she ruptured one of his testicles and he needed immediate emergency surgery, good fucking riddance.
"Yeah, no, I don't think so." New Girl sits next to Natasha. Her hair slides over her shoulders - broad, for someone her size, and muscled, and Natasha clenches her hands in her lap. "So apparently I have a knight in black pleather."
"No, I just have a grudge," Natasha says curtly, and turns away. "Don't read too much into it."
"Are you sure?" she leans in close, and the curve of her breast presses against Natasha's arm. "I feel like I should make it up to you somehow."
"Don't!" Natasha explodes, jerking back so fast that she knocks her water over. Good thing she already took the headache pills. "Don't fucking do that. Stop."
Something spasms in New Girl's face there, and if she were Clint Natasha could read her, but she isn't and she can't. "Sorry," she says lightly, sitting back. "Must have misread the signals there."
"Yeah, you did, because there was no fucking signal." Natasha looks away because New Girl is beautiful, so beautiful, and they're going to eat her alive.
Silence, and when New Girl speaks again her voice is quiet, uncertain. "I can't do what you did," she says. "I'm not - I'm not allowed. It's not my image."
Natasha stares at the table and curls her fists. "I know," she says.
"How is it okay for you?" she asks, and there's a hint of desperation in her tone.
I made my gay best friend fuck me, Natasha thinks. And Director Fury is my secret adoptive father. You don't have a chance. "Luck of the draw," she says instead.
"Look, I'm sorry about -" she waves a hand. "I just, I feel like I need to thank you. Marvel, he - he seriously skeeves me out."
"Yeah, well, don't worry too much, because he's never going into the Arena," Natasha says. And you are, she adds, but doesn't say it because New Girl, she doesn't realise it yet. If she did she'd look more scared. "Just try to keep out of his way until he's gone. He'll forget about you soon enough."
Except that maybe he won't, because Natasha couldn't keep her goddamn emotions in check and now she's made New Girl memorable in his mind, made it a point of honour for him, and now it's not Natasha he's going to be thinking about raping with his spear, and she's glad - so glad - he'll never be in the Arena with New Girl because it would all be Natasha's fault.
"Still." New Girl takes a breath, like she has to bring up the courage to keep going. "This is the second time you've helped me."
"Guess I'm just a saint," Natasha says.
She laughs, and the sound slides between Natasha's ribs like a freshly-sharpened knife. "None of us are saints."
"Yeah, I guess not."
Another silence. "You don't know my name, do you."
"No."
"Do you want me to tell you?"
"No."
"Okay then."
They spar together sometimes - completely random, the trainers like to swap out the partners now and then so they don't get too used to their opponents' moves - and Natasha does her best to ignore it. There's something in New Girl's eyes when they fight that Natasha isn't thinking about, and just because they'll never be in the Arena together doesn't mean any of this is a good idea.
She pushes it back and tries not to think of New Girl on the stage, glittering and glorious and turning knowing smiles on Caesar Flickerman, hinting and promising and teasing but never delivering because they won't pay for something someone's already had. Tries not to think of her in the Arena where the best thing she can hope for is that a huge outlier from another district breaks her neck early on and the hovercraft takes her away before anyone else has any ideas. Natasha wouldn't put it past them to delay the hovercraft - someone as pretty as New Girl will be a disappointment if she's dead too soon, and they'll have to do something with her to make it worth the drop in viewership.
Because here's the thing. In other districts, if you have a crush on a volunteer, you hope they'll win. Then you entertain fantasies of meeting them in all their fame and glory, of falling madly in love and being whisked away to live a life of luxury together. No doubt that's what happens in District Two, for all its trumpeting about rules and social order. But Natasha doesn't have that luxury.
Her best case scenario is that New Girl makes it into the Arena and dies there as quickly as possible. If she doesn't make it to the Arena she'll be sold anyway - too pretty to waste, says her file - and the non-victors never last as long. Natasha keeps track. If she lives, she'll be in the same boat as Tourmaline, except it won't get that far because Natasha will kill her first.
There are no happy endings for the girls in District One, and unless Fury lets loose his rebellion at least a decade sooner than Natasha knows he has planned, it's not going to happen. And so Natasha ignores the feelings that stick in her chest, dreams of New Girl and Marvel and his spear, of fat, sweaty Capitol dirt bags, of bags of white powder and syringes and bruises on her pale, pale throat.
Clint gets over his trainer crush and Natasha wishes it were that easy. At least with a trainer there's a chance, after the Games, that something might happen.
And then it's Natasha's turn. They announce her as the volunteer and if she thought she had no time before that was like a vacation compared to know. It's field tests and more kill tests and weapons tests and endurance tests and the worst kind of tests of all, the ones where Natasha has to learn the tricks she'll one day turn on others. And so she spends her weekends with tall, powerful women in leather, with whips and little black bags of instruments that Natasha can't even put a name to, and she learns that her tolerance goes further than she ever thought possible. She learns how to turn sex into another kind of weapon, whether she's the one taking it or the one dishing it out, and the women praise her and tell her she's a good girl with the tip of their riding crops holding up her chin, now down on her knees and show them how grateful she is to have their approval.
Once they break her - or, rather, once Natasha learns how to make them think they broke her, once she can create the proper separation in her mind and play the game exactly how they want to - Natasha moves on to watching them with others. She takes notes and they quiz her on it, what is this for and what does this do and what should she do if she wants to make him beg like this, and finally, after months, it's her turn to try under their supervision.
She returns home after these sessions shaking and exhausted, and Clint waits up for her like he always does and pulls her into his arms, holds her while she shakes, and even when she vomits all over him he doesn't move until she's done.
New Girl spends a lot of time watching her, but Natasha is past the point of caring now. She graduates with four months to spare, and during those last four they ease off because it's always a mountain of paperwork when the chosen volunteer dies before the Reaping. Natasha is glad for the rest but at the same time she's not, because all she can think is that no matter how horrible her training was, New Girl won't even get that because she needs to be a virgin. They'll throw her in blind and expect her to swim because she's a Career and that's what they fucking do.
She wishes Clint were older, because if he were then they might put him in the Arena along with New Girl - who's far from the new girl now, but Natasha still can't bear to call her anything else - and if he did at least he would kill her quickly because he knows. Natasha's only consolation is that the likely frontrunner for New Girl's year is Luster, and he's as gay as they come but he's the only one that not even Marvel dares to tease about it. He'll make it quick, too.
The night before the Reaping, Natasha asks Clint to leave her alone. They'll be together again after - and Natasha knows the odds, every tribute does, but it doesn't matter because she would tear the world apart to make it back to him - and right now she wants to be alone with her thoughts. Except that someone knocks at the door, and Natasha tells them to go away but they don't, and anyone stupid enough to mess with a volunteer is asking for a beating.
She flings open the door and it's New Girl, dressed in sweat pants and a tank top with her makeup washed off for sleep, and she's normal and not trying to be alluring and somehow that just punches straight through to Natasha's gut. "Can I stay?" she asks.
"No," Natasha says, but her fingers tighten on the edge of the door and she doesn't move.
"Please," New Girl whispers. "You're - you're the only one who cares about me, and now you're leaving."
"I don't even know your name," Natasha reminds her.
"I know." She smiles, and it's not the sly, provocative one she gives to the others but small and pained. "That's what I'm talking about."
Natasha hisses, and she steps aside and lets New Girl in. "This doesn't mean anything," she says. "But you're going to get in trouble if anyone sees you out there."
"You're going to win," New Girl says, and her fingers twist in the hem of her shirt.
"None of us really win," Natasha says, and she shouldn't - her masks, the ones she's spent years constructing, c'mon, get it together - but she can't help it.
"I know." She ducks her head, and her hair hangs in front of her face. "I know, but you will. You have to. Because if at least one of us wins, that's something, isn't it? If any of us has a chance to make it out alive, you do. So you have to."
They're not talking about the Arena. Natasha swallows, and to hell with it. "You should wash out," she says. "Catch a knife across the face, mess you up so no one will want you. I could do it right now, if you want. You could go home."
"I couldn't," she says, and her voice chokes. "You were right - when I got here. You were right. If something happens to me, if it even smells like it might not be a complete and total accident, they'll kill my sisters. I have to make it."
And damn everything to hell, because Natasha knows she's right. She moves past New Girl and flops down on her bed, lying on her back with one arm across her eyes. The mattress dips beneath New Girl's weight. "I'm not stupid," New Girl says, and her voice shakes but she's trying to be brave, and that's somehow worse than everything else. "I know what happens to me if I win. I'm not like you. And I'm ready, I can handle it -" no, Natasha thinks, no you aren't, no you can't - "but I just, once. I'd like to have something that isn't that."
It takes Natasha a second to get her meaning, and when she does she laughs, the sound like a rusty razor blade digging into the skin. "You're looking in the wrong place, sweetheart," she says, and the word twists in her mouth. "I don't know what that is either."
"I know," she says, her voice gentle and sad and completely lacking in seduction. "That's why I'm asking you. You shouldn't go in without that, either."
Natasha drops her arm and stares at her, blonde hair glowing softly in the dim lights. Her eyes are shadowed, dark with the need that Natasha sees in her own every morning as the stylists stand her in front of the mirror and experiment with the best look for her, and something inside Natasha breaks. She sits up, twines her fingers into that beautiful hair and kisses her.
It's far from perfect; two girls full of desperation and fear, one with no experience and the other with plenty but none that counts. Natasha's bed is regulation-size and too small for this, and eventually they pull the blankets off and lay them on the floor instead. Natasha knows how to torture but not to please, and so she throws away her training and goes on instinct.
It's new and frightening and entirely gratifying all at once. New Girl makes soft noises - too soft, too real to work for the cameras or afterward, no moaning yes, baby, oh like that, please baby please, no winks and flirty grins and eyes rolling back in her head - and her hands scrabble at the blankets and her breath hitches as Natasha's fingers slide inside her. And Natasha thinks that's it, but when she finishes New Girl clucks her tongue, rolls over and straddles her, hands on Natasha's shoulders.
"I don't think so," New Girl says, one eyebrow raised, and Natasha has spent all her life hating the existence of her breasts and everything female about herself but New Girl does her best to change her mind.
Natasha is a volunteer which means she has the biggest room with an en suite bathroom, and she and New Girl stand in the shower, letting the spray beat down on them. Natasha massages shampoo into New Girl's hair, fingers pressing against her scalp, and New Girl closes her eyes and lets out a low, happy humming sound and Natasha wishes they could have this for real, but no. But there will be time to think about that and it's not now, and the nice thing about the shower is that you don't have to bother with cleanup afterwards.
Eventually they make it back to the bedroom and half-heartedly pull on their clothes. "Thanks," New Girl says, and there's a catch in her voice but Natasha knows better than to acknowledge it. "Just - thanks."
"Yeah," Natasha says, and she smells like soap and shampoo and she closes her eyes, lets herself drift for just a minute.
"Do you want to know my name yet?" New Girl asks, her mouth against Natasha's collarbone.
"No," Natasha says, and New Girl's smile is sad but she understands.
"You win, all right?" New Girl says, slipping free.
"I will," Natasha promises, and while it's not just for her, it's still a promise nonetheless.
Natasha wins. She wins, and when she comes back to District One with the cheering and the fanfare New Girl is there, smiling and cheering and Natasha blows a kiss just for her.
Her job, as it turns out, isn't bad. She fucks the clients they tell her to fuck and she kills the ones they tell her to kill, and more often than not the two coincide. And if any client gets uppity with her, hires her just so he can break her and feel hot shit about himself, Natasha has authority to break him first, leave him whimpering and crying because the Capitol's toys do not belong to him, and he needs to remember what he's paid for and what he hasn't. And so the months pass and Natasha doesn't end up dead in an alleyway, and life goes on.
Everything's fine - for given values of fine at least - until the week before New Girl's Reaping, when Luster - safe, gay, honour-driven Luster - takes a kick to the head the wrong way and ends up dead. Fear grips Natasha's heart so tightly she can't think or breathe until she checks the roster and sees the name of the runner-up and District One's new male champion.
It's Marvel.
Natasha screams, and not Clint, not Coulson, not even Fury can bring her out of it, not with all three of them holding her down. She fights all of them until she feels the press of a syringe against her arm, and even then she fights it until the drugs flood her system and knock her out. She spends unconsciousness staring at New Girl's face, eyes lifeless as Marvel stands over her, smirking, and takes what was owed him all along. She wakes up screaming.
They keep her in the infirmary under sedation until the day before, when Natasha wrenches herself back into sanity and convinces them to release her. This year it's Natasha outside the door to the volunteer suite, and it's New Girl who opens and stands aside. This year there's twice as much desperation, half as much sex, and an alarming amount of Natasha holding New Girl while she cries in terror.
"I can't," New Girl says, her eyes red-rimmed, and they'll have to put eyedrops in before Natasha goes or she'll be in trouble. "I can't, not with him. I have to kill him first."
"Damn right you will," Natasha says, and she pushes New Girl's hair out of her face and holds her steady. "You will, and you'll make every jackass squirm for wanting you."
It won't change anything, except maybe scare some of them into playing a little nicer with the Capitol's new doll, but even that won't last. Once it's clear that everyone's had a piece, New Girl will wind up the same as Tourmaline, and nothing she does to Marvel in the Arena will change that.
"I brought you something," Natasha says, and she holds out the ring. "It's - I know you have family and they'll give you something, but you need to take this. This needs to be your token."
New Girl takes it, turns it over in her palm, the gemstone glittering in the light. "Why, Miss Romanov," she says lightly, but Natasha can hear the edge of confusion in her voice. "Is this a proposal?"
"Don't be stupid," Natasha says, her voice suddenly hoarse. She takes the ring back, twists the stone, and holds it up so New Girl can see the spike shining in the darkness. "It's poisoned," Natasha says. "One dose only."
New Girl stares at it, forehead wrinkled. Natasha waits for the understanding to hit her eyes, and finally it does. Her head snaps up and her eyes burn, and she just barely manages to twist the spike back into the ring before she wraps her arms around Natasha and presses her face against her shoulder. "Thank you," she whispers.
"I'm sorry I - I can't do anything more," Natasha says, and she means it. She can't promise to save her. She can't make it all right for her if she wins. But she can at least give New Girl the choice, so she doesn't have to rely on one of the others to do the job for her.
"No, it's - thank you." They sit and stare at the ring, and Natasha knows this is it. New Girl isn't coming back. There is nothing, Natasha thinks, harder in the world than this moment.
"I should go," Natasha says at last, but she doesn't move, and New Girl doesn't either. She ends up staying until the stylists knock on New Girl's door in the morning, where she dives under the bed and stays until the coast is clear.
At the Reaping, Natasha stands with Clint and grips his hand. The boys go first, and Marvel volunteers with all the vigour and enthusiasm of someone who never thought he'd get this chance and isn't about to mess it up now. Natasha hopes he'll trip on the stairs and stave his head in against the stage, but no such luck. He stands there, grinning with a smile as big as Flickerman's, and Natasha glares at him. He finds her in the crowd and winks, and Clint growls in his throat.
Then the girls. Natasha holds her breath, and the whole crowd with her when New Girl volunteers, her voice clear and ringing, her hair curled and shining golden in the mid-morning sun. Marvel's eyes drag across her body as she climbs the stairs, her skirt slit just high enough to give the crowd a glimpse of her toned calf and thigh.
"And what's your name, dear?" asks their escort.
"Glimmer," says New Girl, and Natasha closes her eyes.
"Nice to meet you, Glimmer," she whispers. It's the beginning of the end.
The interviews and training go exactly how Natasha predicted they will. Her dress shows everything and her smile nothing, not if you know how to look, but the audience doesn't get it and neither does Marvel. He keeps his cool in front of the cameras most of the time, but in moments when he forgets they're watching - or maybe not, who knows - his eyes go dark and his smile turns nasty. The only consolation is that the Two boy is huge, steroid-pumpingly massive, and could probably crush Marvel's head between his hands. Natasha hopes so. He's not eyeing Glimmer every chance he gets, at any rate, and that's something.
Natasha holds it together until the countdown. The cameras swoop around to all the tributes, zooming in at weird angles, and they focus in on Glimmer clenching and unclenching her hands, readying herself to dash as soon as the timer hits zero. Natasha doesn't think much of it until it hits her that Glimmer's fingers are bare.
They found the ring. Natasha should have known they would - they examine all the tokens - but she'd hoped, she'd thought one of Fury's designs would pass the test. Now there's nothing left, and Natasha chokes before the countdown even finishes. Clint wraps his arms around her and she struggles to keep calm. She has to watch. She owes Glimmer that much.
But, like everyone else, it turns out she's underestimated Glimmer, and Natasha feels the shame of it like a bee sting on the bottom of her foot. After the initial rush, when the Career pack circles the cornucopia and pokes all the bodies to make sure they're still dead - two aren't, quick work to fix that - Marvel gives Glimmer the side-eye, but she sidles over to Two-Ape and slides her hand over his shoulder. "That was so hot," she breathes in his ear.
Marvel's face darkens - Two-Ape is everything he wants to be, everything he dreamt of in his pathetic masturbatory self-fantasies - and Glimmer knows what she's doing. Natasha holds her breath until Two-Ape turns around, grins at her. "You know it," he says in a low growl, and oh, oh thank god, because he's staked his claim for the cameras and Marvel would be an idiot to challenge him now.
Natasha hopes Two-Ape - Cato, she thinks with an effort, his name is Cato - makes it long enough to have a good death.
Cato and Glimmer play up the whole blood-crazed sex-starved Arena fuck-buddies thing but it's all a tease, a graze of teeth and tongues, drawing it out. They're not going to go at it right there, that's too soon, and maybe Natasha sold Two short because Cato gets that, and she can't read him like she can Clint but she knows calculation when she sees it. He's not Marvel, he knows how to control himself.
"You know you're a cool guy," Marvel says to Cato in the evening, as they sit around a campfire. Glimmer and Two-girl are off gathering more wood. "I mean, I have to kill you, no offence, but that bitch? I'm gonna do her slow. I'm gonna take what's mine, if you know what I mean." He grins, and the firelight dances in his eyes and on his teeth and Natasha would give anything to be there, to drive a flaming stick into his face until the flesh melts to the bone. "Hey, I can even do you after her so you can watch, if you want."
"Hey, who says she's yours to play with?" Cato rumbles, and crosses his giant arms over his chest. "Maybe I'll kill you before you can take her."
"Right, sure, 'cause she's totally your girl," Marvel says and rolls his eyes. "Anyway, dude, whatever, I'll make sure you can watch."
Natasha squeezes Clint's hand so hard he cries out, though he bites it back, and she looks down to see she just dislocated his pinkie finger. He pops it back in and flexes without a word.
"Gay," Clint says a little while later, and Natasha stares at him.
"What?"
"He's gay. Two-boy, Cato, he's gay. He's not into her at all."
"What, really?" Natasha narrows her eyes and stares more intently at the screen. Glimmer straddles Cato's lap and he has his hands up her shirt, and they're talking about the bloodbath kills and how it makes them hot. Natasha knows Glimmer is lying her ass off but she wasn't sure about Cato; now she looks and while his face is camera-perfect, now that Clint pointed it out, she can't un-see it. The pauses a split-second too long when Glimmer touches him where he has to remind himself to react.
"Hey's gay," Natasha whispers, and it sings in her mind like a harp string plucked and left to quiver on its own. He's gay and he chose Glimmer instead of Marvel - more than that, he's making Glimmer his as far as the Games are concerned - and that means that if Glimmer has any chance of getting through this without letting Marvel have her it's this boy. If he kills Marvel and makes it out Natasha promises herself she will buy him as many drinks as he wants, and if he kills Marvel and then dies himself she'll still drink a toast to him.
Glimmer dies the next morning when the girl from Twelve drops a nest of tracker-jackers on her. She thrashes and screams and Cato hesitates for a second but then he's wrapping himself around the girl from Two and dragging her out of there, and he leaves Glimmer behind. Natasha can't breathe until the cannon fires and then she can't see.
Because this is the best they could have hoped for. Two-boy has it in for Marvel - she saw the disdain and disgust and outright dislike that his Career-face doesn't quite hide if you have one of your own - and Glimmer is dead and her body is disfigured and swollen and bursting with pustules and no one will ever, ever use her again.
Still, the best you can hope for isn't always the one you want, and Natasha goes through an entire bottle of vodka in one sitting while Clint strokes her hair. "Leave me alone," she mumbles after, and he does, and Natasha sits in her room and stares at the door like she did before the Reaping, but of course no one comes.
Morning dawns, and Natasha rises dry-eyed and clear-headed. She smiles for herself in the mirror and almost, almost believes it, and that will have to be good enough. That year the nation weeps for the star-crossed lovers from District Twelve, but Natasha doesn't even remember their names. She remembers the girl with the golden hair and the emerald eyes and the smile that cuts through Natasha and leaves her breathless.
Life goes on. The grass grows over Glimmer's body wherever they've buried her - Natasha likes to think there are wildflowers, blue ones, tall and proud and unbent by the breeze - and Natasha finds other reasons to get out of bed in the morning. She keeps a picture in her weapons drawer and never looks at it, but then, she doesn't need to. Panem forgets, but Natasha remembers.