The Beginning
"Olivia!"
I ignore the harsh brittle yell of my trainer and continue to stare out of the window of the Agoge. I'm curled up on my special window seat, stroking the soft velvet beneath me. My rough calloused hands catching on the soothing fabric. I like this seat. I can stare out the main part of the square in District 2 without hassle, watch the miners go to work bright and early in the morning, watch the children of aged 7 and below skip to school holding their parents hands. The bottom sector running laps around the Nut.
"You need to eat before the reaping!"
I scowl and don't move. My trainer, Annabeth, has been waiting for this day ever since I passed my first trial when I was 10. Six years she's been waiting for this day. I've been waiting ten. I started training for this at aged 7, I'm 17 now and I know I can win this.
I should be excited. I should be thrilled. This is District 2 for crying out loud. I was one of the lucky ones. I passed the trials with flying colours, and I was one of the lucky ones to receive the volunteer permit. If you didn't get the permit and volunteered, you were a dead man walking. There is nothing more important than pride in District 2, and if you somehow managed to win you would be publically humiliated in front of the whole district before you were sentenced to death.
My mother and father, Imogen and Felix, was never a big supporter of the games. In fact, ever since I passed the final trial without a scratch they've barely spoken a word to me.
Though it's unusual, it is understandable. We may produce the most brutal tributes of them all, but many kids in the district just aren't cut out to be warriors. Many of them, like my parents, are content with letting other children volunteer and die. They are content with living mediocre lives, mining in the quarry and just existing.
The structure of the training program is thus: The bottom sector, middle sector and advanced sector.
The bottom sector is mandatory. Every child has to complete the bottom sector requirements or the entire family will be punished. You are split into boys and girls and it is basic training for 7 year olds to 10 year olds. The children were forced to move away from their parents and live in the city in the bottom sectors house: The Preliminary Home. The only form of contact between them is a letter once a month. The students will not see a weapon unless they pass into the middle sector. They are trained in strategies, agility, strength and hand-to-hand combat. The trial to pass into the next sector is the participant must pass with 80% or above in the different situations set before them.
The middle sector is where the talented participants start their real training to become a victor. This sector is from aged 11 to 14 and they live back with their parents until they are 13, where they are then kicked out onto the streets. Training includes all weapons ranging from maces to archery, sword play to knife throwing. Physical endurance is pushed to the limit; strategies are ingrained into your brain; tests of strength in multiple forms are forced upon you. Students had to steal to survive, break into homes and pillage all sorts of things for survival- but if we were caught you had to face an ordeal of punishments. Winters were the hardest. It was where you lose most of the trainees. The only comfort and warmth of those few harsh years was the training centre.
If you survived that and managed to pass all the training trials with 90% or above, you were moved into the advanced sector and lived in the Agoge.
This is from aged 15 to 17 year olds. After the harshest years of their lives the children are moved into the Agoge mansion where when they are not in training, live lives of luxury. You specialize in a certain weapon and learn to hone the valuable skills gained when living on the streets such as camouflage, stealth, and hunting. Taught with more tactics and warfare, the tributes to be become lethal. We are finally entered into the final trial at the end of our final year of training. If we survive after the 30 minuets are up, we get our permit. If we die⦠we get a shameful funeral.
I passed all my trials, and this year I am able to volunteer, along with 2 other girls. If however someone beats me to it, I have next year to try but after that all my opportunities are used up. This year is the first year my younger twin sisters are up for the reaping, Emerald and Ruby. They both passed their first trials and are living back with our parents. In a few months' time they are turning 13 and are both pretty excited to be living in the wild.
My brother Alec is now 15, he never made it into the middle sector as his asthma got the better of him. My parents were thrilled- I was not.
It would've been my twin sister's 7th reaping as well as mine, May. In our final trial 3 months ago, she was killed. I killed her killer. And I won the final trial.
I'm not nervous for my siblings to be reaped. I know that volunteers always take their places. I know however that my younger sisters won't make it into the advanced sector. They are too kind. They could never kill a human being, but it's hard to judge. My brother is as fiery as me but his caring deposition would never allow him to be a killer too. They aren't prepared to be a murderer. They aren't murderers'. I am. I'm cut out for the hardships of the Hunger Games. I may not look it, but out of all 24 girls I was one of the 3 who survived
My slim body makes people underestimate me. I am not the strongest girl, but I am fast and I am cunning. I managed to survive though my training didn't I?
"Olivia Bellona," Annabeth begins warningly, and I know it's time to get moving.
"I'm coming, I'm coming." I tell her and lazily slide off my seat.
She flounces away and I pad after her to my old room in the Agoge. Last night would be the last night I'd ever spend in the mansion. I run my hands over the dark wood vanity and sigh. At least when I win I'll be given my own beautiful home. I go to my wardrobe and look at all the training gear in yearning. I wish I could wear one of my training outfits, but Annabeth said my persona isn't going to be tough. It is going to be deceiving. So I must wear an outfit I had tailored after my victory.
A simple purple velvet dress that went just around my middle thigh, black ribbon ballet pumps and a purple ribbon to tie back my midnight coloured hair. I carefully pack the outfit and fold it into my bag. I pinch my pale cheeks to gain some colour and bit my already blood red lips until they throbbed. Lips looking plumper and face looking less dead, I leave my room one final time and go to the home I've always hated.
District 2 is big. And I mean really big. I'm sure I heard of District 11 being bigger, but I have no proof of that until I go on my victory tour. Our district consists of 8 small villages (one being the infamous Victors Village), 4 towns and the main city centred round the Nut. I feel privileged to live in such a district, as starvation is non-existent here- not counting the middle sector students. We're favoured by the Captiol and treated like gods compared to the other districts. We are loved even above District 1, who sell all the pretty little diamonds and such. As long as you stick to the rules, you are just a normal person living in the district. If you don't however, well at least the mayor doesn't encourage floggings.
He'll just have you executed instead. It is better to be killed than shunned and shamed. That is the motto of all the soldiers in District 2; it's been practically branded in my brain since I was 7.
In our district, honour is everything. Without it you are nothing. Worse than the maggots in your bins, worse than the muck that our miners bring into their homes. Without any scrap of honour, you are the scum of the earth. People would rather die than lose their honour and dignity. It is encouraged, in fact.
To be in the Hunger Games you have to win your trials in the most honourable way as you possibly can. You have to survive at all costs. You must throw your feelings aside and do what you must to live. That's what I did. That's how I won. I won smiling with the blood of my friends dripping off my hands.
There is honour in that. Honour in doing what you must to survive, no matter who you betray. It is accepted for the games, and in training for becoming a peacekeeper. In regular life it is upheld but more in a social way. If you were to steal and you are a regular pedestrian that is going against a neighbour a fellow district citizen and you would be executed. The rules of ruthless honour do not apply in that case.
It is all very confusing and often contradictive but you just have to lug it. I, being trained in the Hunger Games have the ruthless honour responsibility. I can do whatever it takes to survive and be called brave and looked up at. If I wasn't training for the games and lived the ruthless honour, most likely I would be dead.
One of my favourite bedtime stories was the story about the boy, who was caught by some peacekeepers after hunting illegally. He snuck out under the fence of his village and caught a baby wolf. He had no weapon to kill it with, so he brought it back alive. He clambered under the fence with the wolf in his arms and was half way to his training house when the two peacekeepers stopped him.
Afraid of being caught he shoved the baby wolf under his shirt, hidden from the peacekeepers.
"What have you got there?" One asked. The boy lied smoothly, pretending nothing was wrong. The peacekeepers kept pestering him to tell the truth that he had been caught stealing and hunting illegally. But the boy would not. He would not give himself away to have a public flogging.
The peacekeepers, proud of the boys resistance, left him be. The moment they were out of sight, the boy dropped to the ground. Dead.
The wolf had eaten all the way through the boy's stomach, and he had not complained.
The boy had rather died than be shunned and shamed.
This is not the way a hunger games warrior is to be trained. We are to do anything for our survival, and if that boy had been in the games and if he thought that social honour was more important than life he would never have won.
A few months ago in my final trial, 24 out of the original trainees had continued to the advanced sector. In the final trial was a remake of the bloodbath. A golden glittering cornucopia stood in the centre of the field. Having my training, I knew a thousand different strategies to survive the bloodbath. Unfortunately, so did the other 23 girls.
I have always been underestimated. Coming from a line of weaklings, me and my twin sister May have always been thought to fail. We were both petite, but where we lacked in strength we had agility and speed. I could weave through the most complex contraptions and still hit the target or escape from my pursuer.
May and I had completed all the trials together, and had all the faith in one another that we would both get the volunteer permit. Had I known then how wrong I was, I would've got May kicked out of training years ago.
During those few years between my second trial and final one, I began to change physically. I shot up from a measly 5'3 to 5'10 within months, even with all the training and muscle growth my arms and legs remained very thin, as did my body. I took this as strength though, as one or two times being sent to the punishment cell I discovered I could easily slip through the bars.
I was perfectly lethal by the time I turned 16 and had one hell of an ego. I could not only hit a small, moving target but could also hit bulls eye every time with my knives and my awl. The mentors focused a lot on my strength training and using larger weapons. I struggled at first, as I did during the middle sector, but by the final trial came around I was exceptional. My favoured weapons will always be my knives however.
The 23 girls I trained with. The girls I was in the final trials with. May- my twin sister was among them. It was cruel, the fact that these girls were the ones I had grown up in training with, stayed up talking and giggling with, celebrated birthdays and reaping with- we would have to kill them if we were to gain our permit.
It was to mentally and emotionally prepare us for the games in case we formed friendships in the arena. They would have to be forgotten eventually.
While I stood on my platform I looked around at the families saying their farewells to their daughters before retreating from the field.
When the gun went off I shot forward, mirroring the bullet that had been shot from the barrel. My long legs propelled me forward and I scooped up a knife on my way to the centre of the cornucopia where the good weapons lay. I was the first there and quickly looped on a belt already laden with knives. I ran from the safety of the golden horn and into the fray of battling girls.
A girl with long brown hair stumbled and crashed into me. Without a second thought I plunged a knife into her stomach and dropped her to the ground, ignoring the agonising scream of a friend I once had.
My eyes darted across the field to detect my next target, and soon another knife was embedded in my roommates back. Two girls down.
Leaping across the body of a girl I refuse to know, I start a fight with Lucinda. Her blonde platinum hair is stained with blood and tears flow freely down her cheeks; however that didn't stop her murderous expression when I laid into her arm with my awl and slashed at her face with a knife. She screamed an inhuman howl and clawed at my face with her dirty blood caked fingernails. Blood filled my eyes and I dropped to the ground in blindness and pain. I lurched for Lucinda's feet and dragged her down to the floor where I kicked her in the stomach and broke a rib. Before she surrendered, she threw my awl in my direction and all I knew was blinding, mind-numbing pain. Fire burned my stomach and with one murderous act of rage I leaped onto Lucinda's back and bit her shoulder as hard as I could, tearing away the flesh.
Screaming in pain and running round in circles to free me, the girl stumbled on a body and hit her head. Lucinda died because she didn't look where she was going. I stabbed her in the head.
Exhausted I wearily look around at the remaining fighting girls. Too many of them litter the ground, lifeless. Frantically I search the bodies, double checking none are May.
The clock shows we are in our final 10 minutes and I force myself to jump onto the roof of the cornucopia. I lazily throw a few of my little knives at the fighting girls and hit all my targets, but not fatally.
After five minutes of rest I slide down the horn and hold onto my bleeding stomach wound. I grab my awl from Lucinda's head and make a beeline for the six remaining girls. Genie saw me coming and jumped away from the fight, hiding behind one of her close friends Paisley. I went for her and forced the memories of days laughing and joking together out of my head and raised the knife in my hand.
Paisley had a feral look on her face that sent chills down my spine. It helped me expel the memories and my emotions immediately. I could faintly hear the dull roar of cheers from the surrounding audience, barely above the sound of my blood pounding in my head. Paisley was armed with a long silver sword, dripping with the blood of some other fallen girl.
Quickly assessing I was outmatched I dropped my awl and scurried for an axe. Feigning exhaustion I slowly heave the axe from the ground. Paisley lunged at me.
I was expecting it.
With surprising strength I swung the axe high up into the air and cut of her head, sending it flying.
I twirled around to see May in combat with Grace, her long black hair flying around her, her beautiful face triumphant as she brought her knife into Grace's arm, pinning her down. May, quick as a snake lashed forward and slit Grace's throat.
And then Genie came up behind her. Sword in hand.
I watched, helpless, as Genie's sword stuck out of my sisters chest, glittering with ruby red blood.
May looked down uncomprehendingly at the weapon that impaled her. Her blue eyes shone with tears, before she crumpled to the ground. Dead.
Without thinking, I flew at Genie and landed on her with all my weight. She could've easily pushed me off, but I was too quick. Knife in hand I slashed and slashed at her face, leaving it in bloody tendrils.
The gong rang off, signalling time was up and we had won. But I hadn't finished.
I clawed and ripped at her face with my knives and fingernails, her body convulsing in pain beneath me.
It still wasn't enough.
I cried as I dragged her to her feet and handed her a knife.
Her face was twisted in pain and rage. I flew at her. She held her knife parallel to her chest, ready to block my blows, but I didn't use my weapons. I dropped my last remaining knife and bit into her arm. I felt my teeth sink down into her flesh and soon my mouth was engulfed in her blood. Her knife slipped from her hand and she tried desperately to beat me away from her. I let go and kicked her in the stomach. She went down, gasping for air, big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. I picked up the fallen knife and pierced through her arm, missing the bone but slicing easily through the flesh and pinning her to the ground.
I straddled her, fury making my vision tinged red.
"Give up?" I hissed through my teeth venomously.
"NO!" She snapped, struggling more. I could feel my pretty blood red lips curling upwards in a terrible smile.
"Good," I whisper, my voice like velvet. "This is for May."
Quick as a flash I removed the knife from her arm and brought it down on her skull with so much force her blood splattered my face. That was the last thing I remembered before blacking out.
When I woke up I was in the infirmary with the nurse bending over me.
"Well hello there Livvy!" She said when she saw my deep blue eyes open.
"Don't call me that." I growl.
I suffered from no major injuries, other than what the awl did.
No one came to visit me apart from my siblings, who did so in private. May was gone, I had lived and there is nothing more hurtful knowing that one child survived and the other didn't. I was a reminder of May.
Me, Cherry and Lolita survived the trials. Cherry and Lolita fought, but stopped when the gong rung, unlike me.
My parents sent a letter informing me of the day of Mays funeral.
Mays funeral was very big. Lots of people attended, as it was unusual for someone to lose the trials and get so many grievers. Later on I realised it was because of what I had done in her memory.
I shake my head and rid myself of those memories. I come to the front door of our family cottage. I don't bother to knock, I stride right in. The whole family was sat at the dinner table, having lunch.
Dad at the head of the table, glasses balanced precariously on the bridge of his nose. My mother to his right, her short brown hair messy and un-brushed. On my father's left were two empty seats- presumably for May and I. Alec was on the other side of my mother, meat and gravy dripping down his chin. Emerald sat beside him dressed in a green dress, Ruby sat next to the two empty chairs in a red dress.
The conversation stopped abruptly as my family came to attention that I was here.
"Well, thanks for inviting me for lunch." I say sarcastically and grab a plate. I load it up with food and sit next to Ruby.
No one speaks and everyone avoids eye contact with me. Shrugging as though I don't care, I dig into my food as the tense silence invades my thoughts. I feel tears prick in my eyes, but roughly stab my thigh with my fork. The physical pain takes over the emotional pain.
"Well. This has been lovely." I say dryly, placing the bloodied fork on the table and scraping my chair back.
I rush up the stairs, my bag with my outfit in my hand and throw it onto my bed. A bed I haven't slept in for years.
"Olivia!" My mother calls, and I growl. I didn't escape fast enough.
Reluctantly I retraced my steps until I was face to face with my mother. I cockily raised my eyebrow to her.
"What do you want, oh mother of mine?"
"Oh dear what have you done to your leg?" She gasps and reaches down to the already clotting wound. Annoyed, I bat her hand away.
"Don't pretend to care. I'll see you in the Hall of Justice for our final goodbyes." My mother stares at me mutely, so I turn and saunter off into my room to get ready.
I jump into the shower and change the temperature so it's nice and hot. I take time washing and conditioning my hair, making sure my jet black hair is silky for when I arrive in the Capitol.
I head into my old bedroom, still filled with trivial toys from a younger era, and begin to change. My outfit of crushed purple velvet slides onto my body and fits my form perfectly. I tie up my shoes and gather up my wavy hair, tying it back with a matching purple ribbon. I bite my lips and pinch my cheeks once more, and look at myself in the mirror.
When I walk out of my bedroom, the sight of my sisters nearly make me feel sick. So innocent looking with their red and green ribbons and matching dresses in accordance with their names. Their innocence brings me ripples of disgust I haven't felt in a long time. They are weaklings. My whole family are weaklings. I keep my face emotionless even though I want to sneer. But they're my sisters. They can read what's underneath my ask as well as Alec can. Their big green eyes widen and they both hurry back into their room. I feel a twinge of regret for upsetting them, and it throws me off. I haven't felt any real regret in a long time. Not since May.
I'm barely aware of the deep growl in my throat as I storm away.
What a time to be feeling emotions which could be my undoing in the arena!
Annabeth warned me of this: "Beware of sorrow and remorse. If you feel these then you will not be able to win. To win you have to kill. To kill you have to be detached. Don't make friends in there Olivia. Don't let emotions control you. Or you will be nothing more than a face in the sky."
I refuse to be a face in the sky. I refuse to give anyone the satisfaction of having my cannon sound. I will not come back in a wooden box.
I walk down the stairs and my father looks up at me, stunned for a moment before its icy resolve returns and his glares pierce my skin. He puts his hand on my shoulder and gently guides me into the living room. I turn when I'm sure we're out of mum's hearing range.
"What?" I grumble.
"Olivia you don't have to do this."
"You're right, I don't." I lie, knowing full well this was something I had to do. He knows me bluff and I meet his disappointed gaze.
"Be careful in there, won't you? I don't think I can handle losing another daughter. Not after May."
I nod sharply.
Will he be proud of me? Will mum?
I hope so.
