Tobias Burgess is born a perfectly normal summer morning in the slums of District 9. He enters the world wailing to high heavens, angrily flopping his sausage-limbs all over the place as if he's protesting being born and demands to be shoved back into the warm womb at once. He's quite possibly the ugliest baby in the world, but Sophie Burgess falls in love with him immediately.
"You're perfect," she whispers to the squirming bundle in her arms, gently brushing her fingertips down his brow, just barely avoiding poking her baby's eyes out when he twitches at the action.
"He'd be more perfect if he'd just stay still," her mother snorts, but there's a fond smile playing on the edges of her lips, so Sophie knows she doesn't really mean it. (Years down the line, she will look back at this moment and think god, yes, but that's another story completely).
"No," she disagrees, humming gently as she slips a still trembling finger into her baby boy's tiny little hand (because oh, by Thirteen's fiery end, his tiny little fingers and even tinier little nails are just so gosh-darned cute). "He's perfect just the way he is," she tells her mother, practically glowing with pride over this tiny little creature that she's made, a grin stretching across her lips so wide it's threatening to split her face in two.
At the sight of this, something in her mother's expression softens in a way it hasn't done since Sophie started throwing up during mornings and had to confessed, crying, that she thought she was with child.
"I suppose he is," she says gently and settles in for a long night.
-*-
The days afterwards, Sophie spends hours of time just sitting by his crib, watching his tiny face scrunch up in a perpetually confused expression that sometimes seems eerily like a scowl.
"What a grumpy little man you have," her mother laughs at her between demonstrations of how to burp the babe and put on a diaper correctly. "It's like he came out of the womb an already middle-aged man!"
Then she'd had to quickly slap the child on the back to dislodge the vomit that it was choking on, and the moment was irreparably ruined.
-*-
Tobias is seven when he watches his first hunger games. Sophie holds him the entire time and cries, because there are children being murdered on the screen and it's all the nightmares in the world she never wanted him to see.
"It's okay, mama," Tobias whispers into her long hair, and somehow the words sound like a dark promise rather than the sweet comfort he intends it to be. "I know."
In the warm brown irises of her son, Sophia sees something dark and dangerous look back at her.
-*-
Sophie's son is fourteen when he volunteers in the place of a skinny little boy with shockingly pale hair and a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. He is fourteen and young-faced and just the other night he blushed bright red at the mention of some girl in his class and now he'll be fourteen and young-faced and blushing forever.
He's only fourteen, younger than any victor has ever been, and Sophie knows immediately it's a death sentence being hung around his neck in a snare. The peacekeepers lead him away, not even letting him look back at her just once, and Sophie screams to the bare heavens for her boy, her only son, her Tobias, and watches his back disappear into the masses for what will be the last time.
At her sides, Sophie's parents holds her back, hugging her tightly to stop the torrent of tears and at the same time give the illusion of control. Later, when she rewatches the reaping purely out of machochistic self-flagellation, Sophie will listen to the narrator oh and ah and claim unconvincingly that aw, she's so overwhelmed she's crying for her son, how proud Mrs. Burgess must be that her boy has the chance to participate in something this great, look at that, people, that is true patriotism right there, and she'll want nothing more than to shove that microphone up that fucking narrators hole.
He's always been special, her Tobias, quiet and kind and cleverer than most, but neither of those things will help him in an arena full of killers.
Sophie cries and cries and cries and cries.
Tobias is fourteen, and life has already taken him from her.
-*-
When Rosa from next door arrive with freshly baked pie and a bottle of home-brewed ale, face grave as she hands over the traditional gifts of mourning, Sophie throws the ale-bottle at her head and screams as she slams the door in her face.
When three days later the couple from three houses down arrives with a small bottle of distilled moonshine and a wheat cupcake with a single sad strawberry on, Sophie allows them inside with a deaden look in her eyes and places the gifts on the kitchen table with a practiced smile.
-*-
The Burgess's have exactly one television, and its on this that Sophie and her parents and siblings sits glued to basically from the beginning. Every day without seeing Tobias widens the dark pit brewing in Sophie's stomach, and sometimes she finds herself bent over the flowerbed, emptying her insides into the greenery with vicious force.
The days where she does see her baby boy are almost worse. He appears skinnier and smaller behind the screen, tear-tracks visible as he weeps sporadically, babbling almost uncontrollably in any interview he gives. During close-ups, she can see him quivering, almost shaking, and she wants to cry all over again.
Her Tobias is so strong, so strong, and seeing him like this fractures her already fragile heart until the sharp edges shred her from the inside out.
The commenters' lighthearted commentary almost makes her break. "Well looks like we've got another crier from District 9," they joke to each other like they aren't talking about a fourteen year old boys terror at the thought of violent, painful death. "Guess we can count them out of the run again, can't we?"
And then the crowd laughs like its the funniest thing they've heard in their lives, and Sophie grips her knees tight and is silently grateful she won't ever meet any of them because Tobias is fourteen and scared and needs her, and if she ends up shot because she beat a couple of high-profile tv-people to death, she won't get to watch the games so she can be with him the only way she knows when he inevitably gets beheaded or shot or exploded or otherwise viciously killed on live tv.
One day though, she swears, she will find those bastards and she willl make them eat their own tongues.
(But for now, she watches, because that's all she can do now for her little boy, bless him a thousand times over)
-*-
"Listen, Sophie honey," Her mother says comfortingly, and if her eyes weren't bloodshot and her voice hoarse, Sophie could almost mistake her for causal. "We have to prepare ourselves for the worst. Tobias is a bright lad, but he's only fourteen, hardly a match for the likes of this years' careers."
"Yes," Sophie answers monotonously, shrugging her mother's hand off her shoulder without breaking eye-contact with the tv.
-*-
In the rankings, he get a four. Sophie cries for one hour straight, silently relieved because the girl from District 7 only got a three.
The boy from District 1 gets a twelve, and so does the girl from District 2.
The couple from District 12 doesn't even get a two.
-*-
"I miss my mom," Tobias snivels in an interview, swallowing down sobs that shake his tiny little frame in intervals. "I wanna go home now."
"Well," Caesar Flickman smoothly replies, his smile strained at the edges. "I suppose you'll get to do just that when you win, won't you, Tobias."
His words sound false even to Sophie's naive little ears, but Tobias do not seem to notice.
"Really?" he says through snot and salt-stains, shining up like Caesar has given him the sun and moon in one swift swoop. "You really think so?"
Caesar continues smiling.
He doesn't look Sophie's little boy directly in the eye.
-*-
"Mrs. Burgess," the boy with the pale hair whispers into his scarf, ashamed and guilty. "I'm sorry."
Sophie gazes down at him, noticing the wild pale hair the way his scarf covers his lower face, and wonders what her son saw in this boy to die in his place.
She may never know.
"Don't be." She tells the boy, gripping her hands behind her dress to hide the trembling. "He's not dead yet."
The words are like poison in her mouth.
-*-
There's a misshapen bouquet of drooping flowers on her doorstep the next day. Sophie carefully places them in a glass and does not cry.
(She does, however, stare emptily at the ceiling for hours before she remembers the time and lumbers over the couch like a corpse dragging itself through town.)
(She counts the days down with growing dread. Each one always comes too soon)
-*-
The day arrives, and Sophie sits curled up in the ratty old couch, clutching her toes and blinking owlishly at the screen. Her parents exchange worried looks over her head, and her father lays a careful hand on her shoulder.
"And... here we go!" Caesar Flickerman cheers on the television, as the first horn sounds.
Sophie screams. It takes a long while before she stops.
-*-
Once, when Tobias was seven, a mere boy playing in the dirt, dragging in all sorts of things that she patiently cleaned off with a smile and some laughter, he took her hand and made her a promise.
"You are the best mother I've ever had, and I love you," he told her. "So don't worry. I won't ever leave you, not unless you want me to."
And Sophie had laughed and smiled and nodded, then forgot about it completely.
Tobias, it turns out, does not.
-*-
Once upon a time there was a little boy that went out to war and became a monster.
Here's a secret for you: monsters don't stop being monsters just because they die.
-*-
The horn blows and twenty-three champions lunges forward.
With a small, indecipherable, grim smile, Tobias Burgess strolls off the inactive bomb and picks up a stick from the ground.
-*-
Years later, in a speeding train between districts, two victors will sit down with their mentor and watch the previous games. Of all these, only one will truly stand out.
"The 60th Hunger Games," Haymitch will drawl and swallow two mouthfuls of whiskey with the manner of a doomed man. "Fuck, that was some game."
"Let me guess," Katniss will say dryly. "Blood and gore and chopped up bodyparts?"
Haymitch snorts. "No, girl." he'll say, then pause. "Well, yes," he'll admit. "But that's not the damnedest part." he leans forwards conspiratorially. "The victor of that year, Tobias Burgess, was a total dark horse. No prospects at all. No sponsors. No numbers. No nothing. He was fourteen at the time, and back then the young ones never survived for long. Everybody thought he'd bite it for sure during the first day."
Interested now, Katniss will perk up. "I assume he didn't," she'll say curiously, fishing for more information.
"Gods no. He went out in that arena and butchered all the remaining contestants within less than three days. Killed a near dozen of them in the first hour, then hunted the rest down like a fuckin' dog. Fucking sliced one in half with a chain. Strangled another. Blew a few up. Got his hand on a sword half-way through and proceeded to brutally and efficiently chop up the remaining careers. The little shit was a gutter-trash boy from District 9's version of the Seam, untrained and uneducated, but by god he was inventive. Fucking sneaky little fucker snuck up on them in the middle of the night, slit their throats in their sleep, rigged traps in the forest during the day, put such terror in the other contestants that one of them went mad and starting eating himself. He still has the record for shortest time in the arena."
And Katniss Everdeen, victor of the 75th Hunger Games, Mockingjay and symbol of the Rebellion, will blink once, then sit back in her seat with a hum.
"I suppose we're lucky then," she'll say wryly. "That they didn't reap him again."
"Yeah..." Haymitch will snort, expensive whiskey bubbling up his nostrils in a disgusting display that will have Katniss wrinkle her nose. "Right. Lucky..."
-*-
Tobias Burgess, fifteen years old, lean and mean and smiling cheerfully as if he hasn't just strolled out of a bloodbath of his own making, steps up on the podium and takes a seat in front of a stiffly smiling Ceasar Flickman.
"Heyya there Mr. Flickman," he says, dark eyes sparkling with something old and dark and predatory. "I guess you were right. I do get to go home once I win."
Then, before two million wide-eyed viewers, he smiles, all wide and bright and showing sharp, sharp teeth. The words that follow are not a suggestion, but a command, and two million people watching from behind the safety of their television shudder in accord at the sound of it.
"It's been fun playing, but let's not do this again shall we?" He pauses, dramatically, crinkling his eyes as his smiles continues on and on and onuntil all there is left is teeth. "After all, Tobi can't be a good boy all the time, can he?"
And honestly, do you really want to see me when I'm bad? the coldness in those eyes and mock-cheerful tilt of of his lips ask in dark amusement.
With a shaking, half-patched smile, Ceasar Flickman agrees brightly and finishes the aftermath interview with no further questions.
-*-
Fifteen years after his bloodied debut, Tobi Burgess knocks on the door of an abandoned building, a cheerful smile on his lips, bloodthirst in his eyes, and a masked white-haired weirdo hoovering by his side.
"Yo." He says, cheerfully. "Katniss, is it?"
He smiles.