She was eight.
A Hunger Games Fanfic, set before Katniss' time, in District 11.
This is my first fanfic and has not been Beta'd. Comments are very welcome.
She was eight when her little sister was born.
She was still eight, two hours later, when her mom died. The young girl had tried to stop the bleeding, she had called for help, but everyone around was poor and sick and weak, so they didn't come, and her mom had fainted and her dad wasn't home from the cotton fields and she didn't know what to do.
The three of them cried later that night, huddled together.
She was eleven when her the accident happened, and her dad was brought home in agonizing pain. She took care of him as much as she could, until he died after three days.
Her little sister was all that mattered in her life now.
When she was thirteen, a fight had broken out in the orchard where she and her little sister worked. Workers and mostly Peacekeepers clashed into each other. Shots were fired, people were whipped and hit and people ran around, fleeing, crashing into each other, panicking. She had grabbed her little sisters' hand, leading her towards safety, away from the crowd. Her little hand slipped out of the bigger one, when the young girl tripped and fell. She stopped and looked around ask quick as she could, to see how the small body was kicked in the panicked group, feet hitting her arms, legs and finally her head with a big crack, blood seeping into the ground.
She lost the will to live. There was no one left. She barely ate or drank. She spent most of her time lying on the ground of her shack, waiting for Death. The Peacekeepers had come two times, hitting her with their whips, but she didn't care anymore. The third time they came, they had dragged her to the orchard. So she worked, too numb to protest, too numb to get herself killed.
She just turned fourteen, when she was standing in line with the other girls of her age. She wore her best dress, her only one, with just a few holes. She stood, staring, not absorbing her surroundings. A name was pulled out of the glass bowl. A young girl, who had her name in only two times, with big scared eyes, walked towards the stage. There was the ask for a volunteer. Suddenly, her head became clear. She didn't have any reason to live, but the girl on stage did. Her hand shot into the air. "I volunteer!"
She was taken to the Capitol. She forced herself to learn a few new skills, though she could hardly care. At the presentation she climbed and threw some knives. She got a six.
She stood in the tube, moving up to the arena. She felt calm, at peace. They stood in a big patch of dirt, the cornucopia on the far end of the circle. The other tributes shot away as the countdown hit zero, running towards the cornucopia, grabbing weapons and supplies. Two of them shot into the woods right away, both had taken a backpack. She hadn't run. She sat down, her legs crossed. She wrote in the dirt in front of her, while kids were stabbed, kicked, shot with arrows, hit and one got impaled on a spear. Four kids had been able to get away into the woods as well. Only six were left at the cornucopia when the fighting calmed down a bit, each sizing each other up, when she jumped up, her arms spread. "I'm not afraid of death, because the alternative is much worse" she exclaimed, "all because of the Capitol."
For a few seconds, nothing happened and everything was quiet.
She felt a sharp pain as the arrow pierced her heart and everything around her became white.
When her body hit the ground, the silence hold for another second. Then, the six tributes all went their separate ways. Blood filled the her writings - 'The Capitol is responsible for all deaths. It's not entertainment, it's torture.' – and her death was shown only once, while live, to hide her words in the future. But people had seen it, and that was more than she could have hoped for.