A/N: Hi! This is future Hunger Who here! I just recently uploaded chapter eight and, please believe me when I say this, it is miles better than the first seven chapters. How much better? Well, there's been four years of writing improvement that has been had between those chapters and chapter eight. I do intend to rewrite these chapters at some point but bear with me and bear with this story while I do so! Please! I think it will be worth it!
In the meantime, I've fixed some obvious typos and changed the title to what I have now decided to call this story.
I hope there's still some Peetato shippers left among us!
No One Mourns the Wicked
There are four rules to life.
1) It is sick.
2) It is cruel.
3) It is hard.
4) It will always come to an end.
I didn't come up with these rules. In fact, up until I was eight years old I always thought that maybe there was the smallest inkling of a chance that my life would be okay in the end. But my mother was the one who sat me down and explained it all to me. That life will never be fair, that we are all doomed to die, and there is no point hoping for a miracle, because miracles don't exist.
Those four rules always stuck with me. Because as the hazy bliss of childhood began to fade away and I began to realize that the lady dressed as a clown who visited every year wasn't taking lucky draw winners away on a vacation, the cruel reality of life began to bear down on me.
73 games. That's how many there has been since the rebellion. 73 games, 24 tributes for each-except for one which was 48 tributes-and 1775 deaths. The average death toll for one year in Panem used to be 2, 468, 435 but after the uprising and rebellion, morality rates soared. It's understandable, since people were fighting for freedom, but when they lost and the Capitol won, the morality rate didn't go back to normal.
It didn't go back to normal because of the Hunger Games.
We've all grown accustomed to death. It's like it doesn't faze us anymore. Well, I say it doesn't faze us, of course it does, but it doesn't effect us in the way it normally would. Even without the Games, people die in the streets, whether it being by being frozen in the winter time or starving because of lack of nourishment. It's like death is always two steps behind all of us, constantly waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Some of us are better off than others. Some of us are born merchants, which means we sell to peacekeepers or other members of our district who can afford it. My family own the bakery, which means that we are one of the lucky ones. We can't eat the product, obviously, but we can take the stale remains of unwanted food for our tea occasionally.
The people who aren't born merchants are from the seam. These people work in the mines, which is what our District produces for the Capitol, and don't get paid very well. They fight for food everyday, you can see it in their eyes. I hated having to stand by and watch them pass, their faces worn and their hands calloused and sore. I wished I could give them something, anything, that could help them get by.
That's why when I saw her, I couldn't resist helping.
I had always unintentionally kept an eye on Katniss Everdeen. My father told me when I was a kid, before my mother taught me the lessons of life, that he had dated Katniss' mother but she ran away with a coal miner because when he sang, all the birds stopped to listen. Katniss herself sang the Valley Song in assembly that day. I remembered listening out specially for the birds, but I couldn't hear them.
Because they had stopped to listen.
I think my friends believed I had a crush on Katniss. I suppose I probably would too if it were one of them always watching her as she picked up her sister from First School and walked home. But that wasn't it at all. Sure, she was a pretty girl, but she wasn't my type. She just made me curious for reasons I couldn't explain.
The day I helped her, I had been working with my mother in the kitchen. It was raining from the heavens outside, the water battering the ground in a seemingly never ending battle of water vs. earth. It was honestly like one second, there was nothing in our back yard, and the next thing I knew, Katniss was sitting under our apple tree.
Her father had died recently in a mine explosion and the Everdeen family had started keeping to themselves after it. I wasn't sure how they were going to support themselves, since I hadn't seen Mrs Everdeen out looking for jobs or anything since it was long past the grieving period. But I knew it was none of my business so I left it alone.
But seeing Katniss outside, under the tree, I knew something was wrong. She was thin and frail, she didn't look like she could lift a finger without having to struggle to do it. I looked at the bread that was cooking in our ovens, the bread that was going to feed greedy peacekeepers, and felt ashamed of myself. I knew I had to do something.
I walked into my mother as she was pulling the loaves out, causing her to unbalance and drop them into the flames. "Peeta!" she exclaimed, using the wooden peel to scrape the bread out. They were burned around the edges, not too badly, but badly enough that we couldn't display them. My mother sighed and rolled her eyes. "Oh Peeta, are you kidding me?!"
I winced. "Sorry," I tried.
It was too late to apologize and I knew it. My mother lost her temper and smacked me with the end of the wooden peel. It hurt like hell but I saw it coming, since she wasn't going to let a silly mistake like that go unpunished. I could feel my eye immediately swelling up but it wasn't too bad, I could sort it out later.
"Feed them to the pigs you useless creature!" she said yelled at me. "You might as well, who's going to buy burned bread?"
I don't think my mother realized that many of the seam citizens would die for a crumb of bread, burned or not.
I saw Katniss outside, through the sheets of icy rain, and went to the pigs so my mother wouldn't get suspicious. The door bell went at the front of the bakery, indicating a customer, and she was forced to go back inside. I tore as much of the burned pieces off as I could before hurrying across the yard to Katniss. My feet skidded at least twice and I tried not to make a sound.
She didn't look up at me until the last moment, her grey eyes weary and tired. She tensed, as if preparing to fight, probably thinking I was sent out to shoo her away.
It's okay, I felt like saying, I'm not going to yell at you. I didn't speak, no matter how much I wanted to, because I was too much of a coward. I just dropped the bread at her feet and ran back to the bakery, hoping that she'd get the message. Take it, it's alright, I'm giving it to you.
I dared to meet her eyes once, when I was at the door. The exhausted eyes had a gleam to them, a glimmer of hope I felt proud to have caused. Katniss scrambled forward and gathered up the bread, scurrying away quickly as if she expected me to change my mind.
After that, the Everdeen girls never seemed to look hungry.
I have a very unfortunate birthday. It falls on reaping day. I know, horrible, right? My mother got excused from the reaping for the 58th Hunger Games because she was in labour with me. She always took it as a sign of bad luck, I think it might be one of the reasons why she's never been my number one fan. I'm a reaping baby. I can never celebrate, either. Two children are taken away from our District every time I turn a year older and I can't celebrate. I'm not sure I'd really want to anyhow. It would be a smack in the face to the family's of the reaped children. Hey, I'm sorry about your kids going to their death but if you don't mind, I'm going to celebrate my own life, okay? No, I'd never do that.
Delly woke me up on my sixteenth birthday. I'm not allowed girls in my room but Delly is persistent none-the-less and climbs our draining pipe every time she wants to get to me. She knows how to jimmy the lock to our window as well, so she can climb right in.
I had been sleeping comfortably, prepared to stay in my nebulous state for a little while longer, when she started singing in my ear as loud as she dared.
"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy Birthday Peeta Bread! Happy birthday to you!"
"Go away Delly," I mumbled. "Still sleeping."
"Oh grow up Mellark. You know I'm not leaving," Delly said. She tugged on my bed covers. "Come on, kid, I want to give you your present before the reaping."
I groaned but did as she asked, sitting up groggily and rubbing my eyes. "What is it?" I yawned. Delly was already dressed for later in her best red and white checkered dress an her hair was plaited in a complicated french braid. It's compulsory to dress your best for the reaping, so we look like we actually care about what we look like to the Capitol.
"Wait, no, I need to give you Madge's gift first," Delly explained. "She doesn't think it's much but I told her it's awesome." She handed me a plastic bottle of clear liquid. There were bubbles in it, fizzing and popping.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Lemonade," Delly answered. "She stole some from her father's fridge. It's some drink from the Capitol. Apparently it isn't half bad. Go on, try some."
I unscrewed the cap and took a hesitant sniff of the contents inside. "Are you sure it's safe? It smells like disinfectant."
Delly sniggered. "Just try it," she chuckled. I sighed and tipped the bottle back, nearly the chuckling on the bubbles as they attacked the back of my throat. Delly burst out laughing when I coughed, leaning forward and banging my back with her fist to help me breathe again. "Okay," she gasped between laughs, "maybe you should leave the lemonade for now."
"I agree," I replied, putting the bottle down on the floor.
"Now it's my turn," Delly announced. She grabbed something from the floor and presented it with a flourish. "Ta-da!"
Delly was a merchant as well. Her parents owned the shoe store. Normally, she wasn't allowed to take any of the product but this time must have been an exception. I couldn't believe it. She was giving me a new pair of shoes from the store. "Delly," I said, "I can't accept these."
"You have to!" she blurted out. "I swear Mellark, if you make me give these back my parents are going to strangle me for begging so much to let me give them to you!"
"But Delly, they're-"
"Oh stop complaining and just say thanks," Delly grinned.
Knowing that I was fighting a lost cause, I sighed and smiled. "Thank you Delly," I said.
"You're welcome Peeta Bread," she replied.
"Is that a girl a hear?" Rye came into the room, covered in flour from the morning shift. His face fell. "Oh, hey Delly." He sounded dismayed.
"Always a pleasure to see you too Rye," Delly said sweetly.
"Shouldn't you be at home preparing for the reaping?" my brother asked, going into the small bathroom attached to our room to wash up.
"Well sorry, I wanted to say happy birthday to your brother." Delly hopped onto my bed and threw her arm around me. "Sixteen is a very important age."
Rye popped his head around the door, his eyes wide in faux surprise. "Jesus Peet, it's your birthday?" he exclaimed.
I rolled my eyes. "What gave it away? The fact that Delly's here so early or the fact that it's reaping day?" I asked.
Rye shrugged. "A bit of both?" he guessed. He grinned and winked. "Of course I didn't forget your birthday Peet. I think mother might even be planning to let you have a piece of cake later after the reaping. Like, proper cake. She did it for Wayne and me on our sixteenth so she'll probably do it for you too. It's a bummer that we have to go through the reaping first though."
"Eh, I'm kind of used to it now," I sighed. "The reaping will always overshadow my birthday, it's a fact of life that won't change any time soon."
Delly blew a raspberry. "Oh wow, this is cheerful," she said sarcastically. "Come on, don't let the Capitol ruin your sixteenth. That's what they do with the reaping. Try and ruin out lives. Lift the spirits now because I'm not carrying them around all day and trust me, if you don't try, I will be carrying them."
I laughed. "Okay Delly, whatever you say."
Later that day, we were making our way to the square for the reaping. I wore the shoes Delly gave me, since they were brand new and she insisted. I worried that they were going to get covered in coal dust but she told me to stop being such a worry-wally and to wear the goddamn shoes.
The reaping is always filled with an air of fear, hatred and anxiety. The square is always packed to the brim with people, the kids still eligible for the Games in the middle and the parents standing around the edge. I want children when I'm older but when I see the ashen faces of the worried parents on this day, I sometimes wonder if it would be worth it. To raise a child with hope and love, only to have them taken away from me and killed by another child who just wants to get home as well. There's no guarantee it wouldn't happen.
The odds are in no-one's favour.
Why is always so warm on this day? Maybe it's not the weather, maybe it's just the amount of bodies packed into one area but I feel like I'm frying as I stand in the group of boys the same age as me.
Effie Trinket comes up onto the stage by the Justice Building, tapping the microphone and chirping away about honour and excitement. She shows us a video, voiced over by our own President Snow, talking about the betrayal of the uprising, about how the 13 Districts rebelled against the Capitol who supposedly loved and protected them, resulting in the destruction of the entirety of District 13 and the oppression of the other 12. Not that they weren't oppressed before. We had always been oppressed.
The ladies are first.
Effie picks out a name and pulls it open agonizingly slowly. I hope that it isn't Delly or Madge. Anyone but them, anyone but them, anyone but them.
"Primrose Everdeen!"
Oh my god, no.
Katniss' little sister Primrose. This was her first year, surely. She was only twelve years old. Surely this was a mistake. Effie must have read it wrong.
Then I see the timid little girl walking up the stage and I know it's not a mistake.
"Prim!" a desperate voice screams. I see Katniss running up the pathway created by the onlookers and shoving her sister behind her frantically. "Prim! I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!"
No, no, no. Oh god, this was horrible. I resisted the urge to cover my face with my hands and wish it all away. Not Katniss. Not her. Not the girl I've been trying to look out for for all the years. I hear Prim screaming but I know it's useless. Once volunteered for, there's nothing you can do but step down.
Katniss takes the stage, wearing a mask of indifference. I know she's trying to look brave. I've played that game before. When people ask about the bruises on my face and I laugh and make jokes about it. You do it because there's nothing else for it. It's either laugh or cry. And if I cried every time I got smacked by my mother, I would have ran out of tears long ago.
Instead of clapping for her, I find myself lifting my hand and saluting her. I've never done it before, since it's only ever been done at funerals. But it's a sign of respect. And I greatly respect Katniss for what she has done for her baby sister. Then, like a stack of dominoes falling down, people began to copy until the whole district was saluting her. I can tell Katniss was taken aback by this as her eyes widened and her lips parted as if she wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.
"And now for the boys!" Effie said, wishing to hurry things along. I barely had time to pray that my brothers weren't picked before she had ripped open the envelope and announced the name.
I waited. I'm not sure why. She had already called the name but it was like I hadn't heard her. Everyone was looking at me, why were they looking at me? Even Katniss, who I had never spoken to before in my entire life, stared at me in horror.
Had . . . had I been reaped?
One of the boys beside me gave me a nudge and I realized I had.
I'm not sure why I wasn't panicking but I calmly let the peacekeepers escort me to the stage. Maybe things weren't sinking in yet. It just felt so surreal, every voice sounding like it was underwater and every brush of air, touch to the skin, shifting of feet, felt amplified to a thousand.
This had to be a dream.
I shook hands with Katniss, meeting her eyes only for a second before she averted away from me. I turned to face the crowd as the anthem played us out and I saw everyone.
Madge stood stock still. Her eyes were wide and watery. My brothers had horrified expressions on their faces, while my dad looked like he was about to cry and my mother couldn't meet my eyes. I saw Delly last. She was near the back, her hands over her mouth and her blue eyes weighted with sadness.
That's when I officially realized.
I had been reaped for the 74th Hunger Games.
Happy Birthday to me.