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oftidheard · 5 months

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I’m so glad someone is writing for tbosas, I’ve been dying for fics since I read the book, I loved ur sejanus x mentor!reader and was wondering if u could do reaper ash x mentor!reader who has the same views of the games as sejanus :) thanks

aw thank you so much!! ♡ the main focus of this is reader's struggle with facing that they need to fight against the capitol and not just quietly disapprove of the games. implied unrequited feelings

🏳 doesn't matter if it's all okay ㅤ⠀reaper ash x reader ㅤ⠀↳ 2.1k ↳ angst ↳ gender neutral

your gaze darts across your surroundings; eyes raking over the rusting cages and overgrown weeds seeping into the path, slowly claiming the once pristine zoo for their own uncontrollable reign.

the weeds and veins don't scare you; if you stare at them long enough you can pretend you're walking through a beautiful lively forest, on the way to a carefree picnic with the boy you...

you can pretend you're going to spend a day wasted laying in the sun, with the boy you care about.

these daydreams are dangerous, but they're more favourable than remembering the true situation you're trapped in. you'll choose the wildflowers peaking through the cracks over the rough concrete and cold metal of the enclosures every time.

you try not to look at all the abandoned cages as you sneak through the zoo, but every now and then you catch sight of a pedestal that details what once had been a home for meerkats or some bird you don't recognise — and your footsteps stutter at the thought that these same under-furnished and unkempt prisons are what dozens of children have been living in for the past week.

you wish you could physically rein in your mind — wish you could stop it from wandering and growing helplessly miserable — and get it to focus on keeping your footfalls light, on not getting caught.

but every few steps your legs shake, and you fear you might slip on the gravel if your thoughts keep getting away from the problem at hand.

your eyes are constantly scanning the darkness that envelopes the zoo you've grown so used to visiting in the light — if it hadn't been for your familiarity with the layout, the locked gates right at the beginning would have spelt the end of a very short-lived plan. but having been here daily for the past week, and holding onto foggy memories from your childhood of running of to hide in small nooks and crannies; you found a way through a maintenance gate that had been neglected.

now, the path you trek isn't the same well-used one everyone's been using to make their way to the tributes, but rather one that trails around the edge of the zoo; which will — hopefully — mean you're avoiding the main path the peacekeepers will be using.

you've only caught sight of two peacekeepers stationed at the front gate, and another across the other side of a cage you'd hidden behind — who if you had to guess, had been ending their shift and leaving.

your whole plan relies on the fact that there won't be any peacekeepers stationed at the actual cage, that the people in charge will think that if the tributes were going to cause trouble they would've done it before the eve of the games, so tonight they don't have to worry. you worry though, about this flimsy theory, and the fact that if this falls through your plan b is less than trustworthy — relying on your charm and persuasion to get out of trouble with overtired and irate peacekeepers doesn't excite you.

so your head snaps behind you at every rustle of leaves and you shiver whenever the wing changes, but never once does it cross your mind that you could turn back — you can't, and you wouldn't want to anyway. the paper bag of supplies weighs heavy in your hand, and disregarding all your — admittedly naive self-indulgent — feelings, you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you left reaper starving and his district partner dying with not even an attempt at helping the night before you'll never be able to be near him again.

the path nears its end, and the cages that were hiding you are starting to grow sparce, with larger gaps between each of them. you carefully reach the final cage before the path leads out into the open and turns to the monkey cage.

your whole body feels stiff with fear of getting caught, as you peak your head around the corner agonisingly slowly. you almost sigh in relief when you find not a single peacekeeper in sight, loosening your tense shoulders as you approach far less rigidly.

after being out here for a bit your eyes have adjusted as much as they can to the lack of light, but you still have to strain to try to make out the figures of the tributes strewn about the enclosure in varying levels of sleep, through the darkness.

you try to keep quiet — even worried about breathing too loud — as you walk right up to the barrier. your hand reaches to wrap around a bar in front of you, steadying your weight on it as your lean as close as you can until your forehead hits the cold metal.

some tributes are sleeping huddled together in groups of three or four — alliances they plan to carry into the arena, you're sure — while others are curled in on themselves alone and as far away from others as possible. you search for the pair beneath the tree they've claimed as their spot since the first day; and you don't know whether the hitch of your breath is from your skittishness at any sudden movement, or from the fact that when reaper raises his head to see you, his expression isn't unreadably stiff like it has been for days, and instead holds something you hope is softer.

you're too on edge to whisper-shout out for him, so you try to signal that the package in your hand is for him.

after a moment, he looks down to where dill is resting against his side wearily. you don't know what he's internally debating — whether it be his trust of you, or the worry of waking his friend, or even just his own tiredness — but it comes to and end when dill raises her head and notices you.

ever since you've been bringing food and water for reaper, dill has seemed more receptive to your offerings than he has — so when her eyes meet yours only for her to turn to reaper with a look you can't see in the dim light, it seems she's convinced him of something, and he carefully rises.

his approach is light-footed as he navigates the crowded enclosure, making sure not to disturb anyone or risk a stray peacekeeper catching him moving in the moonlight.

when he reaches you it doesn't escape your mind that instead of the proximity in the past day you'd grown used to him being comfortable with, he's returned to keeping a good distance away from the bars, and you. you miss the closeness, but you also know you're here in the middle of the night as someone who could end any tribute's life and then could be gone faster than a peacekeeper could run here; the night-time scares you, you don't blame reaper for feeling the same.

your hand reluctantly retracts from the bar — as if, stupidly, you feel it's the only thing tying the two of you together — to lift several items out of the paper bag in your other hand. reaper has an apprehensive glint in his eyes, but doesn't step further away.

you hold up a wheel of cheese that fills your palm and a box of biscuits big first, only slipping your hand through the bars marginally as to not appear like a threat trying to grab for him.

"i brought food," you whisper, "that's— that's not all of it."

he slowly takes the food from your hand, and you repeat the process when you pass him a pear and a banana.

"my parents wouldn't— they didn't let me bring any more," you mutter ashamedly, having planned to bring an entire warm meal for reaper and dill, when your father had caught you and reprimanded you for feeding people from the districts the capitol's food. this hadn't stopped you, only making you note you had to be more stealthy when slipping the fruit from the kitchen counter — but it had filled you with a dread you're now learning never goes away in a world like this.

next, is a tall plastic bottle that had been ice-cold when you'd grabbed it, but having hidden it behind your back between sweating hands, the frost on the sides has started to melt and drip down.

when reaper takes the bottle, you swear you imagine the split second where his fingers brush yours. but when you duck your head to calm yourself down and raise it once more only to find reaper's head slightly tilted and his eyes glinting with an odd look; you wonder if it wasn't just your imagination.

you shake your head, and busy yourself with reaching into the bag again for the second last item you'd brought.

it's a smaller box than which held the biscuits, and is a bright yellow with fancy lettering. it rattles gently as you pick it up, and you recognise that this unfamiliar item among the regular food and water is something reaper isn't quick to trust.

you reach your hand through the bars, but not far enough to imply you're forcing him to take it.

"it's, um— it's not cough medicine but it— i got really sick last year. i was coughing up blood and could barely breath; this is the medicine my parents gave me."

he doesn't reply, and you try to explain that you're just trying to help.

"they're for dill, i— i don't know much about sickness, but it could help her."

for the first time tonight, reaper replies — with a careful quietness that tries to evade dill's ears incase she's listening — "she's dying."

you nod — deep down you knew this — but the capitol's indifferent politeness runs even deeper, in ways that make words jump to your tongue out of instinct; in ways that stop you from ever having genuine conversations with people you care about.

you take a shaky breath, "i'm certain these will make it hurt less, i promise."

you can't read reaper's expression, but after a pause of silence and what you think is him examining you to see if you're telling the truth — he takes the box in hand. you don't know if he trusts it — or you — enough to give it to dill, but you know it means something that he went as far as to accept it.

now that he's taken what appears to be the last of what you'd bought, and you still remain stood there, reaper watches you. he's not sure what you're doing, until you lift the sleeve of your coat and slide a bracelet off your wrist.

you notice the way his jaw stiffens — under the impression you're gifting him something uselessly expensive to make yourself feel better, or expecting it to somehow give him an advantage in the arena — and you're quick to turn the beads in your fingers and stutter, "it's not worth anything."

"um, not to anyone but me, really. it's like a uh— a lucky charm," you turn it around in your hand anxiously, "it really works, or... i guess it just feels like it does? but i uh—…"

you timidly pass your arm between the bars again, the bracelet dangling from the tips of your fingers with a quiet jingle of brightly coloured beads clicking against each other.

reaper's eyes rest on you again, a gaze you can't bring yourself to meet in case it's as — justifiably — cold as it was the first time you met. but unseen to you, he looks at you in a way of almost understanding.

he does not trust you, he does not trust anyone in the capitol. but one thing he does now find he trusts, is that you are not breaking laws late at night for prize money — something you'd also sworn to him during your earliest meetings — but because you have a heart that beats for the people you should hate. he trusts, that undeniably, there is a rebellious fire inside of you.

reaper slips his fingers forwards and back to his side just as quick as he takes the bracelet.

"you have to do something," he says when you meet his eyes.

amongst the pile of your worries, a fear had lodged itself since the moment the mentoring program was announced. you'd feared ever since the beginning, that the tribute you would be assigned to wouldn't think you truly wanted to help them outside of duty or ulterior motive.

that fear doubled tenfold when you met reaper, and you’d hoped upon hope that he would recognise your genuine intentions.

you know now, he sees it. and he speaks on the thing that has laid beneath all of that which you could never bring yourself to address.

the little kid who would feel an inherent wrongness inside them at every mention of the hunger games ever since their inception still now sits behind your eyes; and they yell at you that reaper is right.

a spark flickers in the place where your fear once rested, "i know," you breathe. fire catches.

#reaper ash x reader #reaper x reader #tbosas x reader #the ballad of songbirds and snakes x reader #the hunger games x reader #the hunger games x you #the hunger games x y/n #thg x reader #tbosbas x reader #❤︎ — the mockingjay sings

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