Chapter Text
‘‘… I wonder if President Snow will insist we have children. If we do, they’ll have to face the reaping each year. And wouldn’t it be something to see the child of not one but two victors chosen for the arena? Victors’ children have been in the ring before. It always causes a lot of excitement and generates talk about how the odds are not in that family’s favor. But it happens too frequently to just be about odds’’ - Catching Fire, chapter 4.
Nine months have passed. Three seasons. Two hundred days without you, Faye. I’m still missing you as the first one.
Wrote and scratched. The ink was erased by her tears. Pyrite, as they call the Victor of the 66th Hunger Games, was sitting alone at the long table. When she raised her head, everything around her was dark. The candle that was illuminating the paper was being consumed. Just like her. She had no idea what day was. Well… what night was. The time for her is just a thing that happens outside. Isn’t something real. Apparently, the sun went totally down. Confused, with her eyes looking into the endless darkness of the window, she wondered how long it had been since she sat in that chair trying to purge the pain in letters that will be sent to no one. Wasting ink and paper. Wasting her life.
The life she won.
Outside her bubble the things started changing. Maybe, that’s why she couldn't talk to Johanna lately. The telephone lines had been cut down for a reason. The streets can whisper in rumors of hope but ever since the Peacekeepers had been multiplied nobody want to raise suspicions. The fear grows in white.
She held the letter close to the flame until her fingers burn and the paper turned into black ash that stained her fingertips. It hurt but she could take it. She knew what real pain is. She still feeling it after all this time. A little burn was nothing compare the things that she feels on her chest. Sometimes the pain goes to her bones and there’s day that her soul screams in twitching. Or all at once. The only thing… well the only person that could calm her down is somebody -quoting him- impossible. But thinking about the comfort between his arms, his smile, the time that they’ve spent together... Once more, she asked herself what changed on his mind. Not so long ago they spent time together, in the Capitol. All along the Victory Tour of the past Hunger Games. At the end of the winter. Exactly less than two weeks. Almost –with some glitches on the middle– a month together. As never she could imagine. But it felt like an eternity because of his last words. They couldn’t be together anymore. It was never a together, apparently. They were nothing, actually.
Nothing is what it was. She's still thinking her life is senseless. A waste of food and water for her District. Out of the blue a light illuminated the desolate dining room and a static sound broke into her ears. She startled on her sit. It was the TV. Although that didn't leave her more calm. It was a message from the Capitol. The screen faded to white and the Capitol emblem appeared on the center.
Suddenly, she remembered what day it was. At half past seven in the evening there would be a national mandatory transmission. It must be it. All the 12 Districts have the duty to watch it. She talked about that with Johanna before the lines went down. They laugh about it because it was obvious that the central theme of the night would’ve be the big wedding. And there was Caesar Flickerman, speaking in front of the Training Center about Peeta and Katniss -and their wedding, of course-. They were about to choose the dress and then the flavor of the cake and everything. As if the people outside the Capitol care about it. Definitely she didn’t care about it. Her sister died! The television loses all her attention and the melted candle gains it. She was scratching the table with the candle wax when had to take a deep breath. That acting was not the only thing on Capitol’s schedule. There was something else. Something worst.
She couldn’t image HOW worst. Nobody could.
The Quarter Quell was around the corner with the punish that comes with it. Every 25 years The Hunger Games have a theme. A subject that makes the games difficult but that the Capitol loves to watch. Finally, Caesar left the star-crossed lovers of District 12 aside to introduce the real news, welcoming to the president Snow. When he appears on TV with that pair of cynical eyes and white hair she feels her chest closing as a pair of high-security gates. His image is there to remember to the 12 Districts that he owns them and if he wanted he could step on them like serpents. She feels throw up but doesn’t have nothing inside. Only an acid taste of wine gets stuck in her throat and burns it. She doesn’t have any idea when was the last time she ate something. And then her stomach growls as if just remembered that needs something. Snow talks about the dark days, again remaining the power he has. Before he talks about the next Hunger Games, makes a tour of the previous Quarter Quells: The first one, the 25th Games, the Districts had to choose their own Tributes. The second one, the 50th Games, there was the double of Tributes on the Arena.
She tries to figure it out what’s was the worst.
“And now we honor our third Quarter Quell,” says the president with a square piece of yellow paper on his hands. He looks at it and starts to read it out loud. ‘‘On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.”
A piercing scream is heard in the Victor’s Village of her District. The second scream sound full of rage. Some glass breaks outside her mansion. She’s in silent. Outside there’s more insults, range hits and doors slamming shut. Then a moment of nothing. She’s frozen on her sit until she finally throws up on the floor.
She couldnt care less about hear her name that day. She doesn’t care about die or being killed. She cares because two of the five victors there is on the District are her parents. The Victor of the 33th Hunger Games, Levi Forrest, and the Victor of the 38th Hunger Games, Porter Millicent Tripp. And because she has two little siblings.
She came back to reality when she hears the door. The blows on it seem to be on the verge of knocking it down. They call out her name and she knows that's them. Her family. But her brain appears to not give an attention. She can’t move.
A dim light in the hallway signals that the door is already open. They are looking for her. Running to everywhere, calling her. She can’t answer neither. Just a tear jumps from her doe eyes when she hears the cries of Milo and Wren. The same nightmare over and over.
‘‘Fawn!’’ screams Porter, and can notice that she’s crying to.
There’s only two woman’s victors to choose from. Mother and daughter. When the first sob escapes from her throat, Levi soon reaches the dining room. Runs to hug his daughter and falls to the floor, crying on her legs.
‘‘Oh, my baby’’ he moans, sobbing.
She’s still in shock, looking to anywhere. And he’s crying. The most tuff man that she ever knows is broken in front of her. Even when she was ripped, even when her sister was ripped. He never cried before. At least not in front of her. But nine months ago everything changed and tonight made it worst. Porter arrives with the little ones and they all hug in silence. They know that Levi can make it. There’s other two mans to be ripped.
And Fawn knows that she is going to be the one on the Arena.