AN: Yay! I feel original, because I've never ever seen this idea on Fanfiction before! Actually, it probably has been done, but maybe not. Anyway, last night in the shower I came up with it and, even though it was about midnight, I felt compelled to go write it after my shower. Now I'm posting from the school library during lunch. Hoorah for dedication! Anyway, enjoy.
A Moment of Blind Vengeance
When Retton, the president at the time, announced to the Districts what their punishment for the attempted rebellion was to be, they were in uproar. They told us that we were cruel, for destroying District 13, and for this.
They never consider that they brought this on themselves. They never think about the children of ours that they killed. They never think that they deserve this.
They do.
My son Orrick was a soldier. He was a pilot for the Capitol's army, and he was supposed to be flying over to a jabberjay center, bringing technicians to repair one of the recording devices. They never made it there. The rebels attacked his plane, brought it down. He was killed in a fiery explosion as he fell from the sky, out of control. He was eighteen.
My daughter Sanna was also killed by rebels. These were not a part of the official rebel army, but were rebels never the less. There were four of them, and they'd wandered into the Capitol on their own. It was just months after Orrick had died. She'd been walking home from a sweet shop when bang! bang! bang! bang! Three shots through the chest, and one, just in case she could somehow survive that, right through her head. Ten civilians on that street were killed, four injured, before Peacekeepers realized what was happening and were able to shoot the rebels. Sanna was only twelve.
My name is Corbus Gryner. I was President Retton's personal assistant. The rebels killed both of my children, and my wife committed suicide just a few days after the rebels killed Sanna.
After the rebellion, Retton was in a meeting with some of his advisers when the idea came to me. He needed a punishment for the Districts, something that would never allow them to forget the horror of what they'd done to us.
All I could think of was Orrick's intense green eyes and Sanna's care-free blue ones.
He was eighteen. She was only twelve. They'd killed them both.
I knew what I wanted to do. But was it humane? Was it right? Of course not.
But it wasn't humane or right to kill Orrick and Sanna, either. So I explained my idea to Retton.
The children of the Districts would be thrown into a harsh arena to survive once a year, and would remain there until only one was still alive. One boy and one girl from each District, between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Because Orrick was eighteen, and Sanna was only twelve.
It didn't start as a fight. I don't think even I could ever be that cruel. No, my idea was simply to kill them. Starve them, let wild things attack them. Retton had the idea to televise it. I watched faithfully that year.
The next year, one of his advisers told him that the Capitol viewers simply weren't entertained. The advisor came up with the idea of forcing them to kill one another. That was what we did the second year.
I didn't watch that year, though. It seemed people had gotten carried away with my idea. Yes, I'd wanted to kill the children, to get back at the rebels for killing mine. I'd even wanted to make it a contest. But to have the children killing each other and forcing their families to watch?
That seemed cruel even to me.
In the end, though, there was nothing I could do to reign Retton and his advisers in. Each year they added something new, until finally, not only were the Districts forced to watch their children kill each other, but they were forced to celebrate it.
In the end it was too much for me. I hung myself in my bathroom, they say out of grief. That was part of it, certainly. I missed my wife, and I missed my children. Dearly.
But, more than that, I was afraid of what I'd started in a moment of blind vengeance. The Hunger Games. Twenty-three children, every year, dead because of something their parents had done.
On my last day, I made the decision to hang myself because I realized I'd made the same mistake that both Orrick and Sanna's killers had made. I was punishing the wrong people.
I was killing children for no good reason. I was no better than a rebel.
I am ashamed to say that the Hunger Games were my idea.