Chapter One.
Flesh and Blood;
The 55th Hunger Games.
Prologue, Part One.
Rain.
It meant something, surely, that the day of her burial the sun had decided to hide away. Amongst the graveyard, a sombre attitude hung with the bystanders, mixed with a melancholy everyone felt as her body descended into the dirt.
Her parents looked on with cold, sad, broken faces. My baby, her mother clung to her umbrella, shielding herself from the downpour, watching the box disappear forever. I'll never see her again.
What made this day so much worse, what made her father especially delicate, was the building opposite the cemetery. A taunt. A tease. The Academy – so beautiful, so superior, so important, and it was because of them they would never see their daughter again.
Of course, it was their own fault, not the trainers. They had paid for tuition. They had made the idea of volunteering seem so special. So rewarding. So tempting that their beloved had to take it, otherwise, what was the point of going on when failure tainted their reputation?
It was their fault. And yet, blaming it on the foundation of their District, on the Capitol, on the District, on everyone but themselves made it so much... easier.
They could sleep at night with a scapegoat. Without, life would drift through their fingers: meaningless, unimportant, pointless. Nothing.
"Would you like to say something?" The man responsible for organizing the funeral looked at the parents with what the woman thought genuine sympathy, and the man thought fake through and through. Both shook their heads, neither had the strength to force words out into the air. Let them die on the tip of their tongues than be absorbed by the masses, sad on the outside, laughing on the inside.
A girl who died was a girl best forgotten. Shameful, even. Another speck of dust to be cast away because she had failed, and there were others who hadn't, living amongst them. Victory. That's what had motivated their daughter to push herself to her limits. To volunteer.
To die.
The fifty-fourth Hunger Games had claimed their daughter's life. For them, it would be remembered forever. For the rest of the District, tomorrow would be a new day, and her tomb would be a place left out of sight, out of mind, and disowned. That's why the Academy was so close. The cemetery was a reminder of what happened to those who didn't work hard enough and yet still clung to a hopeless ideal of glory.
Work hard, reap the rewards. Fail, die. Choose.
When the service was over and the crowd dispersed, they took each other hand in hand and bent down together, placing a flower, each of their choosing, on the mound of dirt by the tombstone.
Neither cried. Not because they wouldn't, but because, if they shed a tear, they knew they'd never stop. Here, placing the flower, it was time to make a decision. Live on with her memory and use it to continue. Or cry, rage, scorn, loathe and repeat, repeat, repeat.
"She shouldn't be here."
He looked at his wife, a desolate shell of the woman he'd married, but strong, so strong. She was hiding the worst parts of this hell. What she felt on the inside would break her apart piece by piece if she let it. It was the woman he married against the woman she was becoming.
"None of these people should be here," he gestured to the tombstones of countless teenagers, dead because of an ideal, a stupid, recurring ideal that murder meant life, "we remember, that's all we can do."
She nodded. It was all she could manage. Inside, a picture of their daughter, before the reaping, dressed up, a beauty beyond anything, blossomed into reality. If she held to that, she could forget this vision of their daughter, cold and dead in a coffin. That was not the image she wanted. The girl she had been, maybe even before corruption led to her early death, that was the vital idea she had to hold onto.
Silently, they both said a goodbye, and together they left the graveyard.
Opposite, imposing and eternal, the Academy stood powerful. Inside, two teenagers, one girl and one boy, would volunteer in a year's time for the honour their daughter and so many others had once held close.
They'd make the fatal error that this was an honour beyond compare and their families would have to cope knowing they could have made a difference.
It was a torture like no other.
The horror of Panem.
The price of the Hunger Games.
Tribute form on my profile, alongside deadline and other information.
Anyway, hello to those that know me, and those that don't. Welcome to Flesh and Blood! This is a SYOT, feel free to submit a tribute, in fact, I encourage you too. I have another story halfway, maybe more than halfway, through the Games. So, because it's nearing its end, I thought I'd put this one up, because by the time submissions are closed I'll probably be even closer to the end of my other one.
Basically, this is the first prologue to introduce the story, the second will be a way of putting up the tribute list and showcasing the blog that accompanies the story, and then we begin getting to know our wonderful tributes. This SYOT is set in the same world as my stories Madhouse and Beyond the Veil. It's canon so expect some familiar faces, although I might have changed a thing or two to fit in with what I've done previously. And as always my format changes between each story, so don't expect consistency.
Yeah long introduction, that happens with the first chapter of a new story. But yeah, tribute form on my profile, I'll keep a number of how many boys/girls have been submitted and we'll go from there. Only one tribute may be accepted per person (unless sadly, I haven't received enough, although I may just extend the deadline), and then a PM will be sent out letting you know if you've been accepted or not. I can't please everyone, so I hope you understand I may have to say no, but we'll see what happens.
I'm excited, I hope you're excited. Let's do this!