Fanfic / The Odds

The Odds (FFN Link) by Nyame is a Arrowverse/The Hunger Games Fanfic, where Arrowverse characters are transplanted into the setting of the Hunger Games.

Laurel Drake, the illegitimate daughter of a Peacekeeper in District Eight, is just doing what she can to make sure she and her family survive, much like everyone else in Panem. She has no interest in rebellion or any seditious activity, spending her days helping her overworked mother and training in martial arts with her little sister Sara at their Uncle Ted's gym. Other than having to live separately from her father, she's content with her life and has little interest in changing it.

Oliver Queen is the son of two Victors, who has been training all his life to claim his moment of glory. Quick to dismiss any doubts or misgivings of the path chosen for him, he eagerly awaits the day he turns eighteen and will be finally old enough to volunteer for the Hunger Games. He dreams of becoming a Victor just like his parents, much like every other child in his district.

Then, the Seventieth Hunger Games arrives. Laurel is reaped, while Oliver volunteers. And Panem is changed forever.

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Tropes:

• Adaptation Name Change: As Dinah never married Quentin, Laurel and Sara are not legally acknowledged as his daughters. Therefore, they take their mother's last name instead, calling themselves Laurel Drake and Sara Drake.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The Lances are in an even worse state than they are in canon, due to being extremely impoverished and unable to be a family out in the open because of draconian marriage laws preventing Quentin (a Capitol citizen and Peacekeeper) from marrying Dinah (a District Eight citizen). The only good thing that comes out of it is that they're much more appreciative and protective of each other.
• Adaptational Context Change: Quentin's alcoholism is the result of being unable to be with his family thanks to the repressive laws of Panem, so none of his hostility is directed towards them but rather to Ted, for angering the Capitol and causing Quentin's application to marry Dinah and allow her and their daughters to adopt Capitol citizenship to be rejected.
• Adaptational Job Change:
  • Dinah is a seamstress instead of a college professor due to the change in setting. Subverted with Quentin, who, as a Peacekeeper, is technically the equivalent of the police in Panem.
  • Robert and Moira are not businesspeople, but rather Victors who mainly train Career tributes and entertain the Capitol.
• Adaptational Wealth:
  • The Lances go from comfortably middle class to dirt poor due to living in the dystopian Panem. Dinah works herself to the bone as a seamstress at one of District Eight's textile mills for comparatively little pay, and both Laurel and Sara have no choice but to take out tesserae for their family to get by once they reach reaping age. It's mentioned that one of the reasons Quentin remains a Peacekeeper with Capitol citizenship (and therefore unable to marry Dinah and be with his family out in the open) is because his paycheck is used to help pay for the family's expenses.
  • The Queens are still very wealthy, but not to the obscene standard they are in canon due to being from the districts.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: The normally cunning, if irreverent, Vanch makes a pass at Sandra during the train trip to the Capitol after getting wasted.
• The Alliance: Many tributes elect to ally with each other during the Games to improve their chances of survival. For the Seventieth Hunger Games, there are four that are formed throughout the pre-arena events:
  • The Career Pack, the alliance of the District One, Two, and Four tributes, which is formed in every Games. Ra's al Ghul advises all of them to delay the breakdown of the pack for as long as possible, as every time the pack broke up early in previous Games has almost always resulted in the victory of an outlier tribute.
  • Joanna and Danny de la Vega, who as siblings are a natural alliance.
  • Laurel and the District Seven tributes, Rory Reagan and Evelyn Sharpe. Interestingly, the alliance isn't formed out of mutual interest but rather because Laurel pities them as the youngest tributes in the Games (Rory and Evelyn are both twelve, the youngest possible age to be reaped) and wants to give them some semblance of a chance to win. She has to go out of her way to convince her mentors to let her ally with them, as Ted and Sandra point out the two are only going to drag her down in the long run and make her feel worse about their inevitable deaths. They later add Joanna and Danny to their alliance after the two groups become friends. Ultimately it doesn't matter, as Rory and Evelyn are killed during the opening bloodbath before they can actually do anything.
  • Cyrus Vanch, Hunter Zolomon, and Jason Woodrue. Laurel explicitly compares this alliance to Vanch going around District Eight with his enforcers and throwing his weight around and fully expects him to betray the latter two the moment they're no longer useful to him.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Laurel encounters Oliver during her private training sessions on the roof of the Tribute building, she delivers a few of these to him; when he complains about his parents showing up she points out that nobody else in the building is likely to get a chance to ever see their parents again, and when he criticises her choice of allies Laurel counters that he shouldn't forget that he's ultimately in just as much danger as she is once they're in the arena if the Capitol aren't interested in him.
• Big Sister Instinct: Inverted and played straight. After Laurel is reaped, Sara attempts to volunteer to take her place, but Laurel prevents her from doing so, unwilling to let her little sister risk her life. Once she is in training, this is her main reason for choosing allies, picking younger Tributes on the reasoning that she wants to help someone else get home who deserves to go home if she can't do it herself.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Invoked when Oliver assures Laurel that if it comes down to the two of them in the Games he'll try to make it quick, leaving Laurel to awkwardly confirm that she'll do the same if it comes down to them even if she doesn't place the same kind of importance on the Games as he does.
• Body Horror: Invoked; Helena spends two hours torturing Leslie Willis to death to put on a good show for the Capitol.
• The Bully: The Career Pack's standard strategy during training is to intimidate the other tributes as much as possible, to make sure the smarter and more capable ones are unable to think clearly when it's time to enter the arena.
• Catch and Return: In the first clash between Laurel's alliance and the Careers, Laurel is able to not only catch Helena's arrow, but throw it back with sufficient force to penetrate Helena's arm.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: As the Games unfold, Laurel not only tries to protect the de la Vega siblings, but even makes a choice to save Cisco from a booby-trapped temple, even though it would be easier for her if he died early so that she doesn't have to kill him herself.
• Comically Missing the Point: Susan Williams manages to do this for both of her tributes in the 70th Reaping. She mistakes the crowd's reaction to Cyrus Vanch being picked as support for him instead of delight that he'll be leaving (and likely die); and thinks Laurel prevented Sara from volunteering because she "didn't want her to steal all the glory".
• Composite Character:
  • Ted being the winner of the Second Quarter Quell makes him a stand in for Haymitch Abernathy. However the manner in which he won, an adoring Capitol fanbase sent him a weapon (in this case spiked boxing gloves) that he used to destroy the competition, is closer to Finnick Odair's story.
  • Jack Ryder (AKA the Creeper) has taken on the role of Caesar Flickerman as the man responsible for interviewing the Tributes before the Games, and Glorious Gordon Godfrey, his broadcast partner, takes on the role of Claudius Templesmith as his co-host for the Games.
  • It is mentioned that Harrison Wells won his Games by destroying the Careers' food stocks and then electrocuting the rest when they were weak from hunger, making him essentially the Beetee of this world.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Par the course, death in the arena is not pretty. In the prologue alone, Kate Spencer is blown up by the pedestal mines while Adam Donner is eaten alive by a crocodile mutt. Another tribute, the District Three boy, is mentioned to have been tortured to death by the Career Pack.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Helena's father was apparently a prominent crime lord in District 1 before he made the mistake of angering a friend of Darhk's, which led to the Capitol basically dismantling his entire operation, leaving Helena with just enough resources to continue training at the Academy and little else.
• Demoted to Extra: Basically guaranteed when Felicity Smoak is chosen as the District Three tribute, as none of her skills are likely to be of use in the arena. She is apparently the first victim of the Games, her head bashed in on her pedestal by Zolomon.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Invoked. Quentin observes that Laurel's score of seven is a sound strategy, showing that she can handle herself to appeal to potential sponsors before the Games begin without being such a threat that the Careers go after her in the opening bloodbath. Ted and Sandra are the ones who counseled Laurel to do this, as they knew their performances in the arena would've colored everyone's opinion of her had she shown what she was capable of from the beginning.
• Dumb Muscle: Moira Queen's assessment of the tributes from District 2. By contrast, tributes from District 1 are expected to be Genius Bruisers.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Despite his glorification of the Games, Oliver shows visible discomfort and displeasure when the Career Pack of the 64th Games starts torturing the District Three boy tribute. When they start flaying his stomach, he outright stops watching altogether and instead buries his face into Shado's side until it's over.
  • Oliver gets another one when he watches the District Three Reaping for his Games. The fact that Cisco's parents have already lost a child to the Games (and are most likely going to now lose another) makes his gut curl, though he doesn't quite understand why.
  • Despite being trained Careers who are (seemingly) fine with the idea of killing other children, no one on the District One team is particularly happy when both the tributes for District Seven turn out to be a pair of scrawny terrified twelve-year-olds.
  • The First Quarter Quell: Upon being told that they had to vote for who would be their tributes, most of the Districts took the opportunity to send in their worst criminals (rapists, serial killers, even a cannibal). On a related note, the Career training Center for District 1 never shows any footage from this particular game, because it was just that horrific.
• Evil Is Petty: Cyrus Vanch. Even something as minor as accidentally bumping into his girlfriend warrants unforgiving retribution.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. Even to someone as young as a twelve-year-old Laurel, it's obvious that certain aspects of the Games are rigged.
  • Laurel speculates that the Gamemakers deliberately had the male tribute of her district for the 64th Hunger Games, Adam Donner, killed by a mutt so he wouldn't be a threat to the more favored tributes in his Games. Adam wasn't particularly popular with the Capitol due to being overshadowed by others, but he had gotten a high training score, which made him a threat regardless. Killing him would both increase the chances of the more popular tributes and give the audience another brutal death to enjoy (or, in the case of District Eight, despair over).
  • Ted flat out admits that the relatives and close loved ones of outlier Victors are regularly rigged to be reaped into the Games. The reason Sandra and he trained Laurel and Sara is that if one of the former two were to ever anger the Capitol, the latter two would be the most obvious targets to go after since all of Ted's blood family is dead.
• Eye Scream: Slade lost his eye to the District Two female Tribute in his Games, who stabbed his eye out before Slade gutted her in return.
• Famed In-Story: Each Victor to their own degree of course, but the most famous is said to be the Victor of the first Quarter Quell: Ra's al Ghul, who killed twelve Tributes in his Games (including all five other members of the Career pack); and he is also famous because of just how vile most of the other Tributes were. Talia, his oldest daughter, was the Victor of the Fifty-First Games, volunteering at fourteen and killing ten other Tributes in the Games. Ted and Sandra are also significant Tributes, Ted coming close to equaling Ra's kill-count in the Second Quarter Quell (albeit with the advantage of more Tributes to kill) and Sandra displaying the greatest martial arts expertise ever seen in the Games.
• Foil: So far, Laurel and Oliver are perfect contrasts for each other. Laurel is from an outlier District, is well aware of the horrific nature of the Games, and has struggled with poverty and family that can't be together all her life. Oliver is from District 1, the son of two previous Victors who are Happily Married, glorifies the Games, and has wanted for nothing his entire life. The differences are perhaps made perhaps the most clear with their respective younger sisters: Sara is horrified that Laurel was Reaped, whereas Thea is horrified by the idea that if she distracts Oliver too much, he won't be the Tribute for his district.
• Functional Addict: Quentin is an alcoholic, but manages to keep his job as a Peacekeeper.
• Genre Savvy: While Dinah and Sara are concerned at Laurel's lower score of seven out of a potential twelve, Quentin observes that this is actually a good strategy, striking a balance between grabbing the attention of potential sponsors without appearing to be a significant threat to the other Tributes.
• Hate at First Sight: Much to Oliver's confusion, Emiko gives him a venomous look of hatred the first time they make eye contact.
• Hated by All: Cyrus Vanch is so reviled in his home of District Eight that when he's reaped, the entire district erupts in cheers.
• Heel Realization: Oliver basically has one when he makes his first kill in the Games and realises that, even if he knows how to kill from training in his District, he's genuinely not comfortable killing innocent people.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • Suggested as Quentin observes that Tributes like Cisco appeal to him on a personal level, musing that he would want to root for someone like Cisco any other year if he wasn't competing against Laurel.
  • Caitlin Snow of District Three was the Victor of the 68th Hunger Games by manipulating the underground laboratory of her arena to freeze the rest of the Tributes to death, but has since begun using morphling to cope with her grief over losing her next few Tributes so early in the Games.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Laurel ultimately attempts to use Vanch's status as a crime lord against him by discreetly making this known to the other Tributes, reasoning that this will make the Careers see him as more of a threat and go after him first while allowing Laurel and her allies time to get away.
• Honorary Uncle: Laurel and Sara know Ted Grant (who is their mother's best friend) as "Uncle Ted".
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Ted and Sandra advise Laurel to keep her martial arts skills a secret during the three-day training period to make the other tributes (particularly the Careers) underestimate her. When Laurel points out that she needs to practice to keep her skills sharp, they tell her to train on the roof in secret after the day training is over in order to keep up the ruse.
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Basically invoked by Laurel when she rescues Oliver and brings him to her alliance; when the de la Vega siblings and Cisco doubt her decision to save Oliver, they accept Oliver's presence when Laurel challenges any of them to kill Oliver while he's unconscious.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: As is typical, Capitol fashion sense is as bizarre as it is awful. Laurel muses that one of Susan William's outfits hurts her eyes.
• Improbable Age: Vanch became one of District Eight's biggest crime lords at the age of fourteen. By the time of the present story, he has the entire district under his thumb, with only the Victors not scared of him.
• Mafia Princess: Helena was one, but then Darhk seized her father's wealth and assets, turning her into just another Career-with the added wrinkle that most of her District still hated her, but no longer feared her.
• Mercy Kill: When watching the Reaping, seeing District Seven's tributes are just a pair of scared twelve-year-olds (older Tributes from that District are generally strong enough to do more damage), Shado advises Oliver and Helena to give them a quick death out of sympathy.
• Morton's Fork: Helena staying at the Academy amounts to this, as the loss of her father's wealth and resources meant that her only hope to maintain her lifestyle was to stay in the Academy, compete in the Games and become a Victor. The other option is the streets, where she is all but guaranteed to be murdered because of how hated her father was.
• Ms. Fanservice: Exploited In-Universe by Laurel's stylist Zinda Blake, who emphasizes Laurel's natural beauty and growing figure during the parade with a costume made out of mesh and fishnets. While Laurel's family is horrified (especially Quentin and Ted), the rest of Panem is very appreciative and the whole ensemble makes her the star of that year's parade.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Invoked; the three Mentors of District Eight all make it clear that they don't like Vanch, but ultimately Alan Scott agrees to serve as Vanch's individual mentor out of District Loyalty (Ted was already going to work with Laurel and Sandra made it clear that she would never work with Vanch after his previous disrespect).
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Victor of the 64th Hunger Games, Lori Lemaris, wins after her arena is flooded and drowns all the other tributes to death. This is both a reference to Annie Cresta's victory in the books, and Lori herself, who is famously known as Superman's mermaid love interest in the comics.
  • Kate Spencer, the District Eight female tribute for the 64th Hunger Games, is killed by accidentally dropping her district token onto the ground outside her pedestal before the countdown ends, leading her to be blown up by the surrounding bombs. It's mentioned in the original books that another tribute had died exactly like that in a previous Games.
• Off With Her Head: Evelyn is decapitated by Adrian Chase in the opening bloodbath.
• Parents as People: Dinah Drake, who dearly loves both her daughters but has no choice but to neglect them in favor of her job so they aren't forced onto the streets, which is a virtual death sentence. The girls, for their part, are completely understanding of her circumstances and don't hold it against her.
• Popularity Power: Lampshaded by Laurel. She notes in her thoughts that it's usually not the most capable tribute who wins the Games, but rather the one who is most popular and interesting to the Capitol.
• Pragmatic Hero: While convincing her allies to give Oliver a chance to join their alliance, Laurel assures them that they can kill Oliver if he tries to kill them after he wakes up, even if she makes it clear that she's not going to let anyone kill him while he's unconscious.
• Promotion to Parent:
  • Dinah works such long hours that it often fell to Laurel to make sure she and Sara were fed.
  • Ted took over as as the main breadwinner of his large family when he was just a teenager after his father was crippled in a car accident. He mainly got by fighting in underground fight clubs and using the prize money he won to support them.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: To enforce how awful a person Vanch is, Laurel recalls that he had one of their classmates raped by one of his enforcers, forcing the poor girl to get a back alley abortion. This was in retaliation for the girl accidentally bumping into his girlfriend Vivian's shoulder.
• Selective Obliviousness: Invoked; Malcolm muses that the Capitol were fully aware of Laurel training on the roof, but deliberately avoided showing they were aware of her hand-to-hand skills in the belief that it would make the Games more interesting if she only showed those skills off in the arena.
• Sherlock Scan: Quentin and Sara each immediately realise that there is something off about Adrian Chase, Emiko Adachi and Hunter Zolomon even if they come across as perfectly civil in their interviews.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Victors Project:
    • The volunteering procedure for District One is almost the same as it is in TVP, where all the students of each gender in the "Hunger Games" track at the Academy of Gems race to touch the reaping bowl first, with the winner being the one who goes into the Games.
    • The Academy of Gems, District One's training academy for Careers, is called "Murder High", which is one of the nicknames for the Institute in TVP.
  • The author outright states that Vanch's half of the District Eight Reaping Ceremony is based on Bear Redfoot's reaping in Cheating Death: Those That Lived.
  • When Laurel's team of Tributes discover what seems to be an old temple, one of the final traps is a giant boulder rolling after them as they run to the exit.
• Sibling Team: District Nine's Tributes are siblings Joanna and Danny de la Vega. Slade notes that they will be instant alliance, but that killing one will probably spell doom for the other.
• Sins of the Father: Emiko informs Oliver that she wants to kill him because she wants to punish his father, but Oliver initially has no idea what could have motivated such an attack as he doubts that his father killed any of Emiko's relatives in his own Games (and in any case he can't imagine Emiko being that driven to avenge some relative who died thirty years ago who she would never have met).
• The Smart Guy: Oliver's thoughts confirm that District Three's Tributes may not win often, but they are known for having some very dramatic victories when possible, making it advisable to either deal with Threes early in the Games or at least get them on-side as soon as possible.
• Take a Third Option: Basically Laurel's argument for Oliver joining her alliance after Emiko tried to kill him; he can't go back to his own alliance as Emiko has almost certainly convinced them that he is the traitor rather than her, and going out on his own with three alliances still active in the Games would be basically suicide, whereas Laurel and her allies can at least be trusted not to stab Oliver in the back.
• Take Me Instead: Subverted. Sara attempts to volunteer for Laurel after the latter is reaped, but Laurel manages to stop her before she can.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
  • While Oliver and Helena don't like each other that much, they make a silent agreement to deal with the Tributes from Two- Nyssa al Ghul and Adrian Chase- before turning on each other, recognising that Two's Tributes are too dangerous otherwise.
  • Laurel has a friendlier version of this with her own allies; all are aware that only one of them can go home in the end, but Laurel promises that if it comes down to a choice between her or one of her allies as the final winner, she wants to do her best to help the younger ones survive.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: During the opening bloodbath, Adrian Chase not only decapitates Evelyn Sharpe but proceeds to mutilate her body just for the sake of it.
• Time Skip: The first chapter is the the Reaping Day of the 64th Hunger Games, chapter two is for the 70th.
• Training from Hell:
  • Sandra Woosan's idea of training was to take Laurel to seedy clubs and sign her up for cage matches against various thugs. When she was able to defeat each thug without taking a hit in return, Sandra would take her to another club and start all over again.
  • Career training is effective, demanding, and brutal. One of the final tests is being forced to kill someone. Oliver's at least was a Serial Killer, making it a bit easier for him, but he ultimately realises that he can't get comfortable with killing in the arena when the other Tributes don't actually deserve to die.
• Unkempt Beauty: When Oliver first sees Laurel, he notes that she is strikingly pretty despite her drab clothes, and would probably be gorgeous if she cleaned up.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Discussed. Laurel remembers a Hunger Games where a huge tribute from District Seven lost to a tiny girl, because he didn't know how to effectively use his strength.
• Worthy Opponent: In one of their pre-Games talks, Oliver observes to Laurel that he would rather she win the Games if he doesn't, as he finds her interesting even if her attitude is infuriating at times.
• Would Hurt a Child: Tributes such as Chase have no problem torturing younger Tributes such as Leslie or Pamela in brutal, drawn out manners.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: While Oliver killed the male Tribute from Five in the opening bloodbath, he immediately realises afterwards that he can't bring himself to do that again, to the extent that he had Pamela (the female Tribute from Eleven) in his sights for a few minutes before accepting that he couldn't shoot her under these circumstances.

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