(A/n: Hunger Games & its characters does not belong to me, but to Suzanne Collins. This is my first story, please comment/review. All criticisms are welcome. Would appreciate it if you give suggestions on how to improve. Even a simple "x" is also welcome to indicate you have read. I apologize ahead for any wrong usage of terms/information. Thanks.)
If the mutts had not caught my mother in the tunnels, I would most probably not have been born into this sick world where pain has no boundaries.
President Snow personally named me Hope, so that my mother can watch hope die all over again. My first and my last name don't blend well together. 'Hope' signifies a different, faraway and better future. And 'Mellark' brings back grueling memories of a plan which went horribly wrong, when the reptilian head of the mutt trapped my mother's arm in its jaw, froze her in place with the same technology they had engineered for the descending claws of the hovercraft, and dragged her restraining body with the team of rebels in tow to Snow's manor. She didn't even have a chance to yank the nightlock out from inside her sleeve.
The Darker Ages began after my parents' failure.
And so did my punishment.
I dread winters. They are always so deadly silent. The last thing I want to hear now is my sigh, probably my one thousandth, as I pick up the thick 10-inched rusty pen, which is shackled by a chain to a heavyweight table.
Always so concerned about our safety, huh. Mine in particular. What did they think I was going to do with a long stolen pen? Ram it down my throat and up into my nostrils? Finding fault with the Capitol's intelligence quenches my unleashed fury. Some snow has fallen onto the desk, and the slippery and cold surface is visibly frustrating the Peacekeeper on duty, who is trying to keep the logbook dry.
The corner of my lips twitches. Every misery of theirs brightens me up considerably. It's the kind of thing that I look forward to everyday, in my doomed life. Unlike the melancholic citizens of the twelve remaining districts (Twelve had been rebuilt to imprison Thirteen), who actually have a shot at surviving, I have none. My life had already been predestined by the Capitol, starting right from the point where President Snow had forced my parents to mate and give birth to a child – me. Everyone here lied, but I was no fool.
When I was five, I saw my father crumple to his knees on live television, the bullet hitting the ground dramatically after piercing straight through his heart. The paintings of his death scene still sell well in the Capitol, eleven years after his headstone was deliberately put up right smack in the centre of the graveyard. I know that after I die in whatever sadistic situation President Snow has maliciously planned to throw me in, my mother's grave will join it. He promises that their headstones will be sprinkled with fire graffiti and pictures of Romeo and Juliet dying. Even after my whole family is dead, the Capitol still will want to make a joke out of the star-crossed lovers.
I am Capitol's revenge, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's downfall emblem, and the rebels' final punishment. I would have been proud, being the symbolization of a stone that kills not two, but three birds. Except that I have no reason to back up the very freaks who put that bullet through my father, who locked my mother up in a dark room for 16 years where she is forced to watch everyone she loves die onscreen – First my grandmother, then my Aunt Primrose, followed by my non-blood related cousin Uncle Gale, and his family….
One by one, they were all reaped for the Hunger Games, from the pool of existing rebels. Like me, they never had a choice, nor a chance to survive. For the 76th Hunger Games, there was no victor. In the Capitol, they reported that The Head Gamemaker had accidentally taken everyone out with sonic flares. In the Districts, everyone knew that Plutarch had been physically coerced into stabbing the button to release the flare. They provided him with nectar-sweet poison to end his life afterwards. He did.
But it did not undo the pain that eventually drove my mother, the Mockingjay with broken wings and bloodstained feathers, insane, as she watched everyone she had come to love vaporize in a shower of blood. All except one.
Pen awkwardly held in my loose grip, I sign back in to Rebel Concentration Camp, which is the only place I've ever been in apart from the Wide Yard, where we, the rebels, are allowed daily training time with feather arrows and cotton dummies under the disastrous guidance of Haymitch Abernathy – another attempt to mock Katniss, whom I've never met but know is my mother through the History Lectures. They said that Haymitch used to be perpetually drunk, but now branded as a rebel, his properties had been stripped. He doesn't have any money or strength to pay for food (They make you work for it), much less alcohol. He's as good as drunk, though; half the time he's staring into space, his eyes bloodshot and hollow. He never smiles, talks, or sleeps. Not anymore.
I enter the door, and stagger through the padded corridors, the inflated floor sagging under my weight. Once I had known what the padding is for, I never fail to be instinctively irritated by the Capitol's indirect insult. Did they really think that we are so weak that we would fling our heads against the walls repeatedly to try and kill ourselves? There is really no way out of this hellhole anyway, not even in death. They have thought of everything, even the ceilings are high beyond our reach. I grit my teeth together and hurry to my quarters, knowing that after a quick change of clothing, the rebels would be led out in a neat, orderly row to the 77th Reaping, out of the door where I had just come in from.
The clang of the heavy chains around their ankles will reverberate in the narrow corridor, making prints in the inflated ground.
My name is Hope Mellark. I am sixteen years old. I have been a prisoner of Rebel Camp ever since I was born. I am going to my first Hunger Games. President Snow is going to make sure of that. The Capitol hates me. They took my life away. My family is dead, my mother on the brink of death. Effie Trinket is going to unroll that one slip of paper in the reaping ball later on. I know whose name is going to be called first.
I am going to die.
I turn off the ice-cold shower, soaking in the exhilaration I got from being fully alert, and put on fresh, clean clothes. My shirt is not tucked in, with a duck tail trailing out the way I like it. It's informal and untidy, but my appearance would be the least of President Snow's worries, when I mount the stage after Effie announces my death sentence.
I fasten the rubberized Mockingjay pin onto my left collar. President Snow had designed it differently from the original one. This pin has the arrow piercing through the Mockingjay's breast. Rebels are forced to wear it. I look into the mirror for the last time and the spitting image of olive-skinned Katniss stares back at me. Her blue eyes widen with admiration, fatigue, hatred and pride. The sudden wave of emotions, buried for sixteen years, makes my head spin. I stride out of the room, my senses wide awake.
My name is Hope Mellark. I am Katniss Everdeen's daughter.
I'm ready to fight.
[Please review. Even a simple "x" to indicate you've read is deeply appreciated. My writing's bit hard to read, but it gets easier in Chp3 :) ]