I own no one but my own people
Based on the movie franchise 'The Hunger Games'
The first day she thought Henry was going to die had been surprisingly easy.
Far easier than she thought it would be, especially after 2 weeks of preparing herself, her husband and her stepson Roland for the fact that Henry probably wasn't coming home.
Henry Daniel Mills had been chosen for tribute for the 44th Hunger Games just a mere 21 years after his step father Robin Thiefton Locksley survived the 23rd. But there was a significant difference; Robin had been that games favorite son.
Seventeen years old with blonde hair, soft blue eyes, a body made hard and muscular due to years of hard living chopping down trees in the vast District Seven forests, an accent not often heard in Panem and a skill with a bow that other tributes, past, present or future, could never hope to achieve, a 12/12 in his training score …
He was given a golden bow and a whole quiver of arrows from sponsors in the first ten minutes of the games and somehow every natural dangerous element seemed to be diverted away from him.
None of the other tributes ever stood a chance.
Robin even knew to play to the cameras from the moment he was reaped. He walked to the podium with a smug smirk, he was just cocky enough during the interviews where he wasn't unlikeable, he even performed trick shots with his bow during the middle of the games, knowing he was more likely to be given help and be kept alive if he kept the capital entertained.
Henry, however, had been raised in Victor's Village with a mother from District One who had never known hard work and only moved out of her district when her first husband Daniel died of a lung infection while she was pregnant. He was a quiet, kind, shy but smart boy who preferred reading to chopping wood and writing stories as opposed to shooting a bow.
When the reaping happened his lip trembled and tears filled his eyes as he made his way up to the podium shaking. It didn't help that Regina was screaming his name and the peacekeepers had to hold her and Robin back from going after him.
When they said their goodbyes Robin told him to play to his strengths, his kindness, his generosity, his decency, reminding him that all they wanted was a good show…
During the interviews he stammered nervously through them, leaving no lasting impressions apart from the fact that for the first time in the Games history the tribute was related to a victor. His training score was a 6/12, nothing too abysmal but nothing to write home about either.
The moment Regina saw the score, she knew she would never see her son again and she spent the whole night weeping in Robin's arms.
Roland, being only being five years old and still a year away from the mandatory viewing and was safely inside their cabin practicing with the bow his father carved for him. Robin and Regina though were in front of the group gathered outside and staring up at the giant screen showing the games.
The first day she watched, she was numb to everything around her, expecting to watch her son die in the cornucopia in the first few minutes. But rather than fight for resources he ran out into the forest, leaving behind any the bloodbath that claimed eight out of twenty four tributes.
The cameras didn't show Henry much that first day, instead choosing on the career tributes and alliances, and a good looking seventeen year old from District Four who was quite talented at swordsplay.
Four more were killed throughout the day which left twelve tributes; both boy and girl from districts one, two, six and ten, the good looking girl from four, a small girl from twelve, a boy from five and Henry.
The next day though, the boy from five was killed from a snake bite and the career alliance killed off both tributes from six. They had no choice but to start showing Henry who had spent his time hiding in the thick brush, working out the best possible way that would avoid others. While he was walking he did something no one ever thought to do before- he began talking to himself.
He told himself, and those watching, a story about a one handed pirate on an island where you never grow old. He told a story about a woman locked in a tower with hair long enough for a fearless prince to climb, he told the story of an Evil Queen poisoning a princess with skin white as snow, he told stories of a woman who lost her glass slipper at a ball, of a thief who robbed from the rich to give to the poor…
Henry told stories that felt familiar, like those listening where waking up from a dream that you only vaguely remember and were trying to recapture. They all had heroes and villains, they all took place a long time ago in a land far away, they all had happy endings…
They all started once upon a time.
The people watching him were all captivated. They hung in every word, they gasped when the prince climbed the tower only to find the witch on top of it, they cheered when the shoe fit the maids small foot, and cried when it seemed like the princess had been poisoned by her evil stepmother…
So captivating were these stories that the cameras focused on Henry even more than most of the other tributes, apart from when there was a particularly nasty murder of the District Four boy and an exciting chase between the career tributes and the District Twelve girl that ended with her getting an arrow through the back of her head for her troubles.
Seven people. More than half of the other tributes dead and Henry was not only alive but he finally had gotten gifts from his sponsors; a dagger along with a loaf of brown bread and a canteen of water.
In the pack that floated down to the spot he was in, hidden amongst the trees, he found a note in the pocket hand written from one of the Game masters themselves.
"Why did the Evil Queen hate Snow White so much?"
Henry smiled as he leaned up against the trunk and began to weave a tale of a manipulative sorcereress, a murdered stable boy and a ten year old princess who told a secret…
As Regina and Robin watched their son tell his tale for the cameras, she began to get nervous.
She was nervous because now she realized he stood a chance, now she had the worst thing a parent of a tribute could have; hope. Hope that he might survive and come home.
She could barely stand it. She just wanted the games to be over, she just wanted Henry back home in her arms or gone so she could stop being completely terrified every moment she watched that stupid screen.
Robin held her and told her that he would come back, their son would win and come home back to their arms but that didn't help the sleepless night they followed.
When they awoke the next morning, they found out that the last four career tributes had found Henry's tree and had hunted him down like hounds would track down a rabbit.
Her little boy was running through the forests as fast as his legs could carry him, gasping for breath and his dagger in his hand. The arrows whizzed by so close he felt the fletcher rustle his hair.
"HENRY, RUN!" Regina screamed while Robin held her as tight as he could, his whole body trembling and his voice shaking as he told her the same mantra he'd been repeating over and over and over since the moment he was chosen.
"He's going to win."
The other tributes were closer now. One particularly strong boy from District Two was sprinting as fast as he could and was now away from the pack of career tributes and right on Henry's heels, a large blood stained ax in his hand as tall as he was in his hand.
Henry went to jump over a tangle of tree roots but he had misjudged the height and his feet got tangled up as punishment. He fell face down on the forest ground with a painful cry and in less than half a second the District Two boy was upon him. He yelled triumphantly as he raised his ax above his head, the sun gleaming off the metal sprinkled with red.
Regina couldn't watch anymore. She turned in Robin's arms, letting out a sob as she clutched at his shirt, knowing she would hear the cannon soon and her son would be taken from her. Sure enough a moment passed, a shout and a cry, and the boom of the cannon signifying a death.
Regina opened her mouth to scream when Robin cut her off with a frantic, "it's okay! He's okay, Regina, he's okay!"
The brown eyed woman spared half a peek and saw Henry frantically pushing the large District Boy 2 on top of him off, his dagger deeply embedded in his chest.
"I'm sorry," she heard her little boy whisper to the dead teenager. He let out a sob as he buried his hands in his hair as if he wasn't quite sure what to do. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"
His voice was hitched in terror and panic and genuine apologeticness and he was trembling so hard he could barely stand but when he heard the other tributes closing in, he yanked the dagger from his chest, tore a hunk of bread off his loaf and tossed it a few feet in front of the body before he dived into the woods and flattened himself to the ground, hiding himself with the brush as well as he could.
The trick worked. When the other tributes came across the body they incorrectly assumed Henry has continued running on the designated path and sprinted off in the entirely wrong direction, making sure to grab the blood stained ax.
"Henry kicked him," Robin explained to Regina once Henry was out of danger and he had climbed up a tree a few feet in as fast as he could until he was hidden amongst the branches and leaves. "He just meant to get him off balance but the kid fell on his dagger. Henry didn't mean to kill him."
Regina snuffed away her unfallen tears and shook her head. "That won't matter to him. It won't, Robin, he'll see himself as... as a murderer."
He tightened his grip on his wife. "One day he'll realize he had no other choice, he'll be able to tell himself he had no choice but to kill."
She looked up at her husband and saw her husband with a far off haunted look in his blue eyes, the same look he got every time he watched the games and was reminded of his own three kills; a sixteen year old boy from five, an eighteen year old girl from two and a fifteen year old from eleven which won him the game.
Regina cuddled up as close to him as she possibly could, snuggling up against him and letting her stray tears fall on his shirt, whispering how sorry she was that the capital did that to him.
Down to six.
The screen stayed focused on Henry as he covered his mouth to cover his sobs, repeating over and over how sorry he was, how he didn't mean to kill him, how he just wanted to go home. Henry was losing it. Panem's favorite author was losing it on live TV
Another gift floated down to his branch, a tonic that would help calm his nerves but Henry shook his head and simply put it in his bag, choosing instead to just take a few sips of water.
He wouldn't drug himself during the games.
Shaking to the point he was barely able to function, he somehow managed to put the cap to the water back on and forced himself to take a deep breath.
"Once upon a time," he said in a trembling breath, wiping away his tears. "In a land faraway, there…. there was a newborn princess call- called Aurora. For- for they named her af- after the dawn…"
As he told his story, Regina, Robin and the rest of Panem watched as his breathing evened out, his tears showed and eventually stopped and by the time he got to the handsome prince kissing his sleeping beauty awake, three separate cannon booms had gone off.
Down to three.
The games would end tomorrow. Henry's fate would be decided by then, and Regina and Robin would either have a corpse they would never even be able to give a proper burial or their son back.
Neither slept that night, both Robin and Regina kept their eyes locked on a mostly dark screen, watching as the blonde haired seventeen year old girl named Emma Swan from District Four who held an old fashioned knights sword walk carefully along the path looking for the last two tributes and a tall blonde girl from District Ten named Mal, a powerful blow torch in one hand and a sword with a dragons head on the pummel on the other, did the same, while Henry stayed in his tree, clutching his dagger to his chest.
None of the tributes realized how close they were to the other...
Finally Emma and Mal met up just at the base of Henry's tree and both froze, as if, even after all this time, neither wanted to fight and would have rather ran if given the chance. But they both shook out their shock of literally running into either there would-be murderers or victims and began their deadly dance.
A rather brilliant almost dazzling fight between the two women thanks to the fire it almost appeared Mal seemed to breathe took place while Henry stayed hidden in his tree, trying to muffle his frantic breathing as he heard the clang of swords and the roar of the fire from the blow torch that lit up the fire with red and orange flames that enveloped the heavy brush, along with Henry's tree.
The flames inched closer and closer to his resting spot, the small boy crying out in fear and pain as the hellish red flames licked at his feet.
"JUMP!" Robin screamed at his step-son while Regina sobbed as she saw the flames begin to take over the branch supporting him. "HENRY, JUMP!"
It was as if he could hear his parents because in the next moment, just before his branch was about to fall into the hells ape below, he leapt out of his hiding spot, landing with a painful cry right behind the ongoing fight.
"Run!" cried Regina but before she could even open her mouth Henry was up and running, a noticeable limp in his left leg and dark red blood soaking his jeans.
Mal made the mistake of pausing to look over Emmas shoulder at the boy who had took off running and, in that one moment of hesitation, Emma ran her through with her sword- a clean painless strike to the heart. A moment later a cannon boomed and Emma took off running after Henry with the flames chasing the both of them
Down to two.
There were two left. Two tributes left. Henry outlasted 22 other tributes, career tributes, those who underestimated him because of his district, those who got far more gifts from sponsors…
Henry outlasted them all. All but one.
Emma caught up to Henry easily enough and when she did, Regina fell to her knees and a sob ripped past her lips, expecting Emma to run him through as she did with Mal.
But the flames licking at both their backs made it impossible for either to focus on anything but getting out of this hellish apocalypse.
"Come on, Kid!" Emma yelled, sheathing her sword and grabbing Henry by the arm, pulling him faster and faster out of the alit forest as the fire raged all around and behind them. "Run!"
"I can't!" Henry cried, the blood pouring down his leg even faster as he struggled to run alongside her. "I can't!"
"You wanna be burned alive?!"
Henry offered nothing but a short lived sob but the words spurred him on and he managed to run alongside the older teenager.
"Come on, Henry!" Robin cried, his voice panicked and hitched in fright to the point it frightened Regina who never heard him that terrified before. The strange accent he spoke with was unlike anything she ever heard in Panem but on a normal day it was warm and comforting. Now though… now it was full of terror and fear.
"Henry, run!" Regina screamed frantically as the fire surrounded the two of them.
It was too much. She couldn't do it, she turned and buried her face into Robins chest once again. She took several deep breaths, inhaling the scent of forest, of earth and pine and fresh air.
Her son would die. This was it. The first kill had been luck but there was no luck to be had in an inferno with an older far more skilled person running alongside him.
She closed her eyes as she heard the cracklings of an overhead branch, Henry's scream, Robin yelling 'NO!' and then a loud collective gasp followed by what sounded like a deadly rainstorm of almost biblical proportions.
There was a sudden silence throughout those watching the screen and then a voice. Her Robins voice, in a soft mumble, the sweetest words she had ever heard in her life.
"She pushed him out of the way…"
Regina blinked away her tears, hardly daring to believe it. She glanced up and saw Robin staring flabbergasted at the large screen and, hardly daring to believe it, slowly looked at the viewing herself and sure enough, Emma Swan laid there crushed beneath a heavy fallen branch that weighed more than a grown man and Henry sitting a few feet in front of her, his knees pulled to his chest, his head bowed and his body shaking with sobs as the man made rainstorm raged around him, doing its best to put out the fire.
The moment the fire was out the sun was out again, shining brightly on the small fourteen year old boy.
"Congratulations to the victor of the 44th Hunger Games, District Sevens own Henry Mills, the Author of Panem!" a booming voice announced before the inspirational music erupted as they showed Henry being picked up from the arena.
Robin helped Regina up off from the ground and wrapped his arms around her. She rested her head against his chest and whispered against the forest smelling fabric the same thing he had told her time after time, again and again with a slight variation.
"He won."
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