This oneshot follows the a young girl whose older brother, a Career of District Four, goes through the Games.
As with most of my OCs, I named the two in this fic names of a different language, because, while this is not canon in the THG universe, I like to be original in naming my characters. Besides, I like names in other languages.
I'm not sure if the meanings of the names are entirely correct. I got the information online, so if they don't mean what I say they mean, I'm not to blame. I apologize for any mistakes.
Caitria- Gaelic for 'pure'.
Fionn- Gaelic for 'white, fair'.
Reilly- (a form of) Gaelic for 'right arm'.
Beta-ed by Chasing Silmarils, who I thank very much for putting up with me. :)
Caitria didn't understand any of it.
She didn't know why Fionn came home at her bedtime every night with bruises on his face and tears in his clothing. Whenever she squealed his name, thoroughly demolishing her mother's careful efforts to calm her down enough for her to fall asleep, he would give her only a thin smile. She didn't understand that, either.
One day, her parents spoke quietly behind closed doors, which bored her. She wanted for them to play with her, for her father to tell her stories, for her mother to dance with her around the kitchen. She walked through the halls of the house, calling for her brother to play with her instead. He never answered, so she trotted back to room and indulged herself in a lonely reenactment of story her father had once made up for her. Her stuffed toys and dolls, for a few minutes, became two princes fighting each other for the right of a princess's hand in marriage.
Quickly, she became weary of this particular game. She thought that it was silly that the princes had to fight each other. She stashed her vast collection of toys under her bed and left her room again, waiting outside the door of the room where her parents spoke, slumped against the wall.
It was only when he exited the room along with her parents did Caitria realize that Fionn had been speaking with them. His forehead was furrowed, and his white-blond hair was untidy, as if he had been running his hands through it. Caitria knew for a fact that this was a nervous habit of Fionn's.
She shot to her feet, stopping him from walking down the hall along with her parents. "Will you play with me?" she asked with a hopeful grin.
Fionn looked down at her and ruffled her hair in an absentminded manner which lacked his usual affection. "I'm sorry," he said. "I can't. We have to go somewhere now."
"Where?" Caitria asked. She loved going on walks on the beach with Fionn and her parents. Sometimes, her mother and father would take her hands, and she'd walk between them, her arms stretched high in the air. She loved that free feeling she got when they did that.
To her surprise, Fionn's forehead creased even more, and he rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "We're going to the town square."
"Oh," she said, disappointed. Then she brightened. "Will we get candy at the store?" she asked with a beaming smile.
Fionn suddenly scooped her up from the ground into his strong arms, though she was a bit too old for such a gesture. "Of course we will," he said, hugging her close. "Mom and Dad will buy you all the candy you like- but after we go to the square. We're required to be there. Remember? We've done it every year, even when you were only one year old."
Caitria couldn't remember it at all. "Is it a- a tradition?" she asked, trying out one of the more adult-sounding words she'd learned.
Her brother set her down. "You could say it is," he said. "A bad one for some people. But it's a good one for me."
Caitria didn't understand it.
When Fionn stepped up to the stage -why is there a stage in the square? she wondered- after shouting something in the loudest voice Caitria had ever heard him use -"I volunteer as tribute!"- Caitria still didn't understand. What's a tribute? Why would someone want to volunteer to be a tribute? When Fionn stood at the stage next to the man with the strange, high-pitched, hissing voice, and said in a confident, steely voice, "My name is Fionn Reilly", she was even more confused. Is a tribute a new job at the fishing docks? Why did he say his name?
So when the tall Peacekeepers let her and her parents into the Justice Building -I've never been there! she thought gleefully- it was up to Fionn himself to explain everything.
He said he was a tribute. Tributes, he explained, were children and teenagers that went to the Capitol -the Capitol! Even fancier than the Justice Building, she'd heard!- and then went to an arena and...
Here he hesitated for quite some time, holding Caitria on his lap, an odd, sad expression on his face.
"And what?" she asked. "What do tributes do in the arena?"
For the first time in her life, she saw her stalwart older brother cry. It was only a few tears pooling in his eyes, but it was enough for her to start crying too. Fionn, startled by her tears, held her there and, in a quiet voice, spoke to her.
It was then that Caitria learned about death and about the Hunger Games, and she finally understood.
Caitria insisted on never leaving the couch in front of the television. "Fionn doesn't have a chance to sleep in his bed, so I won't either!" she said firmly, a new stubbornness in her voice. She sat with her legs stretched out into the spot where Fionn used to sit. Her head rested on a pillow, and a blanket covered her. She stayed in this position for hours and only got up to use the restroom. She didn't sleep until sleep took her by force, and her parents, concerned, brought her food. She refused to get up.
On the screen, Fionn fought many different people. They all had mean, angry faces that made her stomach turn. Are they angry at Fionn? she wondered.
Whenever she saw her brother's face, it worried her yet more. It was thin and dirty, a mere shadow of his old face. He looked angry and scared at the same time, alone and worried, lost and alert. Caitria wanted to talk to him. She wanted to ask him why he looked as if something was hurting him.
Days passed by. Days became weeks. During that time the formerly innocent Caitria had seen twenty-one people brutally murdered.
His screams echoed through the desolate house. They were wordless, inhuman screams that prompted Caitria to shudder and burrow deeper into her nest of blankets. Her parents sat in chairs in the room with her, anxiously staring at the screen. The house was dark- Caitria had turned off the lights days ago in order to better see the television. She wasn't sure if she wanted to.
A boy with overlong, ratty brown hair was holding knives in both of his hands and kneeling beside Fionn. One knife was at his throat. The other knife was at his hands.
There were men and women without fingers or hands in District Four where Caitria lived. Sometimes they were bitten by venomous snakes, and their fingers were amputated by the healers in order for the poison to not spread. Rarely, sharks or other meat-eating fish would attack children or fishermen, and they would lose a hand. But never before had Caitria even considered the horrific possibility that a person might cut off a fellow human's hand!
First came all the fingers and thumbs- one by one. With each one came an ear-shattering scream and a spurt of blood. Caitria watched in terrified immovability as the other boy finished the job and hacked off Fionn's hands. Fionn was sobbing, and his face was contorted with screaming. His arms looked as if they were missing something as the blood ran out of them like water from a pipe.
When the camera that filmed the torture zoomed in on Fionn's antagonist, Caitria noticed something- there was something odd about his eyes. They were clouded, but they were wild and angry somehow, and her first thought was that the boy was insane.
And it appeared that he was. With a terrifying smile on his face, he hacked at Fionn's trembling body as if he was not able to control the frantic slashes of his knife. Blood and flesh flew, and some splattered the camera. Fionn's screams became louder and louder, and he screamed out every ounce of his life.
His screams abruptly stopped.
The other boy kept hacking with his knife.
Caitria screamed then, since Fionn could not. She screamed his name over and over, tears running down the smooth skin of her face. Her parents wept in their chairs, and the television was turned off by her father's accidentally -but beneficially nonetheless- aimed elbow.
Their neighbors called the Peacekeepers, who arrived too late. Her father and mother were holding each other, choking on their sobs. Little Caitria was shaking about on the floor, shrouded in blankets, screaming the name of her now-dead brother.
The Peacekeepers correctly declared that she had gone mad.
Whispers came from all around the town as she was led down the street, flanked by her parents, aunts, and uncles. Rumors flew, and many of them were justified. Fears arose, and they were not unfounded. Little Caitria, the sweet young girl with the wispy braids and infectious smile, was long gone. Caitria was a gaunt teenager with long, untamed white-blond hair and a propensity to rock back and forth whenever she sat and to randomly begin to scream.
"It was the Games," the whisperers said.
There would be a pause, during which the bystanders, witnesses of their gossip, would digest the information. "The Games broke her!" they said with a dramatic hush in their voices.
A bone-chilling scream might then sound from down the street, promising all sorts of macabre evils to those who had not heard Caitria's tale, but signifying only another screaming fit for those unlucky people that lived near her.
A shudder would likely then come through the crowd of bystanders at the sound.