All I wanted to do was save my sister.
I never intended to start a rebellion.
The way they tell the story now - they paint me a hero. As if I'd woken up one day and decided to bring down the Capitol.
I didn't.
I just wanted to save my sister.
…
My mother was Reaped at fifteen. Blind, small, untrained - everyone bet she'd be the first to die.
And she might have been.
Except the Arena, that year, was underground. A dark labyrinth of shifting passageways, sudden rockfalls, and pits that opened beneath your feet.
In the dark, the other Tributes stumbled, fear dogging their steps. My mother didn't. Her senses honed keen, she evaded them, her smallness an advantage. She waited them out as their torches and flashlights dimmed. They killed each other - or fell prey to rockslides and tunnel collapses.
Until only three remained. Bouncing her voice off the walls, my mother lured the remaining two - Careers - into a cavern filled with ignitable gas, odorless but not quite tasteless to her tongue, and goaded them into lighting one final match.
She had an escape route ready. They didn't.
A blind Victor.
The Capitol adored her. Some more than others. Some willing to pay...and my mother still had her mother and father and her friends to protect.
I never knew my father. I never wanted to know him.
There are days when my mother couldn't stand for me to be near her.
I can't blame her.
Su, my baby sister, Su was her treasure and solace and pride. When the nightmares woke her, she would cradle Su in her arms and she would be okay. Su could make her smile, even laugh, brighten her face when Su called her "Mama" or reached for her hand.
I loved Su too. I was the one who brushed her hair, sewed up the tears in her dresses, and cooked her breakfast. She loved pretty things - a flower, a ribbon, a china ballerina. She loved to spin and twirl and skip. Not a bad fighter either, she socked a boy in the balls who tried to lift up her skirts so hard he couldn't do anything but whimper for half an hour. I taught her to do that, in case I wasn't around to protect her. I did the hard chores - chopping wood, gutting chickens, scrubbing the floors until my knees ached - so she didn't have to. I had her dust or make the beds or fetch a loaf of bread instead.
Still, she was golden. I wasn't, and I knew it.
She was my sister.
Twelve years old. Twelve years old.
A slip of paper: Suyin Beifong.
I just wanted to save my sister. Maybe Mother too; she would have withered without Su's sunlight. My death? She'd grieve and accept and maybe, maybe, deep down, there would be a measure of relief.
"I volunteer!"
It didn't feel real at first. Not when the Peacekeepers surrounded me and marched me to the platform. Not when I climbed those steps to stand before all of District Twelve. Not when Su screamed for me.
Not until the second name was read.
Tenzin.
My best friend. Seventeen. His last Reaping. Almost safe.
Youngest of three, there was no one to volunteer for him.
His older brother, Bumi, he taught me to hunt. Showed me the breaks in the fences. Crafted my first bow.
Kya, his older sister, she had the loveliest voice in the whole District. She'd sing to the mockingjays as she gathered herbs and plants in the woods for food and medicines.
His mother, Katara who never turned me away when I wasn't welcome at home. She could stitch a wound one minute with the tenderest of care and shout down the loudest miners the next.
Aang, his father, the only teacher in the District. I'd seen him stroll between Peacekeepers and their targets, seen him smile and joke and they'd smile back and no one would get punished that day. Always had a smile for me too.
Tenzin was supposed to his father's successor. Quiet, devouring any book that chanced his way, polite, tidy - he had no place in the mines.
I can't remember a time when I didn't see him two or three times a day. We played hopscotch together, swam in the quarry lake together, even snuck through the fence and picked berries together.
Tenzin.
It was real then.