Prologue, Part One.
...
It's freezing.
It was the dead of winter so that made sense, at least. The first few days of January aren't the time to go tramping around in the middle of nowhere, least of all the woods and the mountains on the other side of District Two's fence. The fence that has been silent for the past month. It's been on since the 155th, since everything that happened, and that made sense too.
She turned back to her companion. "You can go back, you know. No point in you standing out here too."
He shrugged, hands buried deep in his pockets. He's shivering, despite himself. "Does it not feel fitting after all these years?"
"It'll be real fitting when you lose all your toes to frostbite too."
"So sentimental," he laughed. His breath misted away in the darkness. "But hey, what else is new?"
They're a duo of nothing but truths these days, it seemed. All of them are, this rag-tag group of people spread out across the Districts, daring to call each other family because it's as close as they've all got, when they are in fact choosing to spend their time in the freezing woods.
"You think six months is enough time?" He asked. "There's a rough sixty-six ways this could go wrong, you know that right?"
"You have no faith," she complained, and leaned forward to flick him in the nose. He recoiled, and swatted at her hand. He's right, though. She'd reckon there's more than sixty-six ways for this to go wrong. Closer to several thousand, really. But if she thought going back would end terribly, she wouldn't do it at all. She knows they have faith in her to survive anything, and she has it in herself.
As long as she stayed clinging to that notion, then maybe it would turn out true.
It's actually doing it that seemed to be the hardest part. She continued to stand there and stared up the fence. District Two is so big you almost never see it, growing up there. She always pictured it to be more daunting, somehow, even though it's already close to fifteen feet high. It looks almost pathetically small in comparison to the grandeur of the mountains.
She turned around and there were the edges of a smirk playing on his lips.
"Shut it, Arker," she said, rolling her eyes, and stepped forward to hug him regardless.
"Wasn't going to say anything," he insisted. He wrapped one arm around her back and the other curled around her shoulders, hand pressed against the back of her neck. She can feel his smile against her temple, infuriating as it's become. Like he said, this is six months. She hasn't been alone, not properly, or separated from any of them in the past four and a half years.
Now she has to leave them all because she can't do this anymore.
There's a reason she didn't want the others here. All of their faces looking at her, strangers all those years ago and now people she loves, she didn't know if she could say goodbye to all of them at once. She's always been awful at goodbyes, and now she's positively ruined.
Besides, she only needs one set of hands to give her a boost.
She gave herself one last moment to press her face into his shoulder and stepped back, looking upwards once again.
"Alright. Now or never."
The first few feet are easy enough with some help and then after that she scrabbled to the top, hands catching at the top of the fence until she could pull herself over. She readjusted her backpack at the top before she dropped over the other side, and landed with a wince on the hard-packed snow. Now they were separated by a line of metal fencing, and she stupidly wanted to climb back over it.
"Try not to get irritated and kill someone, hey?" He asked, but she could tell he was joking.
"Coming from you?" She fired back. "Nice try."
She figured that if they weren't joking about it by this point, years later, then they never would. Joking about it is at least better than stewing in it, letting it take over your emotions.
Well, maybe the Capitol wouldn't think that. But they all do.
He rolled his eyes at her and took a step back from the fence. She made herself take a deep breath. It wouldn't take long for her to reach the inner parts of Two; she had the backpack in case she needed it and a radio in case something went disastrously wrong, but chances were she'd be ditching it all somewhere in the woods along the way. Nothing like coming back with a bag full of supplies and ample communication four and a half years after supposedly being kidnapped.
"See you later?" He called out. The sound of his voice was loud - too loud in such an empty space, but she didn't mind that.
"Unfortunately!" She yelled back, and although he was getting smaller and smaller by the second she still saw the finger he shot her. She stood there for a long while, feeling the smile fade from her face the further he got. Finally the trees took him back, out of view, and she was truly and properly alone.
She didn't quite know how to feel about that.
She turned away from the fence. The mountains stretched in front of her, and beyond that, she knew, District Two. Full of warm fires and people hidden safely inside their homes from the snow. Her family, too, tucked away where the weather and whatever monsters were out here couldn't get them.
After all this time she still didn't know if she was ready. But right now it didn't matter if she was or not. She could see it now; the news spreading the next morning, through the streets of the Capitol and all over the Districts. People whispering and staring, confused beyond belief as to how she was still alive after all this time. She didn't even have an answer for that herself.
She hoped the world was more ready than she was for Seren Dobrana to come home.
She took a deep breath and started walking.
Y'all ready for this?
Welcome back to know one knows what the hell I'm writing about anymore including me!
If you haven't read my second SYOT this literally will make a negative amount of sense to you, but submit anyway because at this point who cares. All submission info/rules/nonsense are on my profile for you to read. Please send everything through PM and not anywhere else.
There will still be two more prologues after this, as per the usual. The list will be posted with the third one.
Until next time.