Author's Note: You all know the story of Katniss and Peeta: Their fight, their love, their revolution. But a world is more than the tale of a small, select handful, and of the countless stories of each legend there are so many tales that are not told. Welcome to Panem during the 68th Hunger Games, as an orphaned boy from District 10, Nomad Strickland, confronts a destiny long in the making. From the horrors of the arenas to the fires of love and war, follow the stories of the Hunger Games that were never told.
The Hunger Games, Panem, Katniss, Peeta, Finnick, Snow, and other established characters/locales/items are property of Suzanne Collins. Rated T for violence, blood/gore, themes, frightening imagery, and language. Part 1 of a 6-part series; some changes have been made for creative effect and relevance to the story. If you have questions, constructive criticism, suggestions, ideas, or otherwise, I'm always happy to listen. Additionally, some elements – such as the Capitol – will be slightly or moderately changed from canon sources, due to story elements that will be revealed over the course of the series. Hope you enjoy!
"Is there any truth left in this world that I can believe in?"
"Truth? There isn't anything true about any of this."
Variability is the spring of the universe. Change one variable and throw open the gates to an infinite frontier.
-Curie Franklin, Foundations of Our Cosmos
District 10 | Year of the 68th Hunger Games
I didn't belong in this world.
Sure, I liked living; it beat the alternative. I wasn't dealt the best hand, however: My home of District 10, deep in the south of the lonely nation called Panem, was a wasteland. Dusty streets littered with weeds and dry grasses carved rough brown avenues between run-down wooden shacks and hovels, meandering throughout the majority of the town's residential wards like a trampled-on snake. Black rats the size of cats wandered about unhindered by the poor, hissing at raggedy-dressed, skinny children. The lucky workers in the district tromped off to the fields of the wealthy landowners; they would work twelve-hour days under the hot, beating sun and wide blue sky, looking after animal herds and baling hay.
Most people in District 10 weren't so lucky. The poor, the hungry, the impoverished – they eked out a living however they could, sweating in the torn and ripped clothes on their backs as they walked, heads down, to another day toiling in the meatpacking yards and slaughterhouse plants or mindlessly tending to the machinery and pens of the dairy factories.
It was a harsh life, all guided by the unyielding eyes of the white-armored Peacekeepers, District 10's security police. I didn't live as part of this district, however: I was no factory worker, no dairy processor, no field hand. I was just a 17 year-old orphan boy, trying to make the best of my days in a world I didn't belong in.
The summer sun beat mercilessly down on my head as I kicked a rock down a dusty street. I looked back over my head, glancing at a run-down longhouse spotted with broken, fractured windows. That was the building I'd lived nearly my whole life in, from birth until age 16: The orphanage, District 10's home for unwanted children such as myself. I left a year ago, happier to wander the streets as a loner and scavenger than live in that hellish dump for another second. The boys there didn't remember me after I left, claimed they'd never known me…but I still remembered them. I remembered their taunts, their insults, their aggression that bred a toxic atmosphere inside those wooden walls. If I could, I'd tear them all down and leave that orphanage in flames.
If it was my destiny to live on the fringes of this world, then I'd walk down that road on my terms.
A throbbing pain in my arm reminded me that I wasn't well. I'd fought one of the orphan boys still living there this day after accusing him of evils he claimed he couldn't remember. He had a nasty punch: I didn't know what he'd done to me, but the growing blue lump in my left arm said it wasn't anything good. Fortunately, I was on good terms with the district's only physician, a middle-aged family man named Harper. I didn't know if there was some sort of doctor's creed that said to do no harm, but that man was as respectful and caring to anyone he came across – regardless of status – as I could imagine in District 10.
I kicked another rock out of my way as I tromped down the street, receiving an angry hiss from a nearby street rat for my disturbance. Few people were out and about, especially at high noon: Most were on the job, while the few who staggered around District 10 as unemployed stragglers – a category I grudgingly accepted membership in – waited out the hottest part of the day in whatever shade they could manage.
I made my way from the edge of town into the Square, the central quad and business hub of District 10, featuring over 20 brick-walled shops and storefronts in various states of disrepair. At the rear of the Square sat the Hall of Justice: A massive, three-story limestone behemoth sporting a monstrous crimson-and-gold flag of the Capitol. It was already dressed in the pageantry of the next day's big event: The Reaping.
Every year, 24 kids from across Panem – one girl and one boy between 12 and 18 for each of the country's 12 districts – were "Reaped" to compete in the Hunger Games, a gladiatorial blood sport for the Capitol's entertainment. Only one child would emerge alive, a victor to be rewarded for his destructive streak with material wealth and fame. Most families and children feared the event; as an orphan, it never fazed me. I saw only a thin line separating life and death, and while I preferred to stay on the living side, I had little to lose.
I pushed my way through the wooden doors of the Square's run-down clinic, sighing as the fan-cooled air of the interior washed over me. White walls and a squat black desk replaced the omnipresent dust outside. The clean interior was a welcome respite to the grime and dirt of the district.
A small, skinny girl in her early teens with brown hair and bright blue eyes sat at the desk, thumbing through the pages of a worn-out, dog-eared schoolbook. I walked up to her and banged on the desk with my fist, startling the girl and knocking the book to the ground.
"The doc around here?" I asked gruffly.
She looked at me unsurely, her eyes locked on mine as she pawed at her scruffy blue blouse. She was the doctor's only kid, and while I knew next to nothing about her, I'd suffered enough injuries in my year on the streets to be well-acquainted with the clinic.
"Maybe? Yes, no?" I said as she clammed up. "Jeez, girl, we're not deciding between your life and death here."
"Samantha," A warm male voice called the girl from the back of the clinic. "Let me talk to our guests. Go play outside, or something."
The girl – Samantha – threw me an uncertain look as she quickly snatched up her book and darted through the entrance hall's rear door. A blonde-haired man in his forties stumbled past her, wiping his hands on a cloth as he greeted me with a smile.
"I'm sorry about her," he said, tossing the towel on the desk and shaking my hand. "I tell her to go make some friends or play in the fields or something, yet even on her days off from school she's in here reading books. I can't understand it. Anyway, don't tell me you're hurt again, Nomad."
"Seems that way, Doc Harper," I said, raising my swelling left arm. "I, uh…engaged in a vigorous discussion with a colleague."
He took my hand, raising an eyebrow and expressing a mix of amusement and disappointment: "What kind of discussion leaves you with injuries like this?"
"The pugilistic kind."
"Ah, of course. I guess our…security…has better things to do than break up fights. Come on back; I'll fix that up best as I can."
I followed the doctor back into the heart of the clinic. Six beds of questionable construction lay out in the open, each sporting a thin, hole-pocked mattress with ratty bed sheeting. It was the best the doctor can do; frankly, it was a lot better than the hay-stuffed mattresses of the orphanage or the random, dirty places I'd slept over the past year. Two groaning men occupied a pair of the beds, one sporting a nasty head wound that bled through a white bandage. The place smelled like antiseptic and decay, making me wonder if someone had died there not too long ago.
"Just have a seat," Doc Harper pointed out an open bed as he retrieved some supplies off of a wooden chair. "Looks like a moderate sprain to the wrist. I'm gonna stick a splint on for now…although you should rest it for the next few days. Is there anywhere you can do that?"
"No. Well…no," I grunted as he wrapped up my arm. "It ain't like I'll go back to the orphanage and beg them to let me back in, and I don't exactly have the luxury of family or friends in the Ward."
The doctor frowns as he works: "So your plan is…to keep sleeping on the streets like everyone else in the Ward, all while nursing an injury? You're going to end up back here before long. I treat everyone who comes in…but jeez, Nomad; you'll bleed me dry. I gotta make a living."
"You don't have to treat me. I ain't coming in here with guns like the Peacekeepers."
"Or, you could, you know, actually commit to doing something more with your life besides throwing rocks at rats and scavenging for a living. Your current plan's not a good plan, Nomad."
"You should see me more often. I'm great at coming up with bad plans."
Doc Harper finished wrapping my hand up, throwing a towel on another bed and looking around sheepishly: "There isn't nobody at the orphanage to look after you until you find your own way of making a living? I mean, if you lived there 16 years, somebody has to be willing to help you out."
"Ain't nobody doing nothin' at the orphanage. If there's somebody looking after me, well…they're doing a pretty bad job of it."
He sighed and looked down at me with pitying eyes: "Look…I'm a physician; I'm supposed to help people. I can't give you any long-term accommodation, but if you want to stay on a bed for the night, I won't kick you out. Once the Reaping's done with tomorrow, you can figure out a better idea of what you're doing."
Sure. I supposed the doctor was right; I'd have to figure out something to do with myself. Scavenging for food and anything else usable on the streets could keep a man alive, but I doubted I could do it forever. There was a certain measure of freedom in being a vagrant: I'd finished school when I was 14, yet living on the edge of society meant I wasn't obligated to slave away for hours in a dirty, dangerous meatpacking plant or some other dead-end nightmare. I still had options. District 10 had a thriving black market and a number of other illegal activities that went on under the nose of the Peacekeepers. I knew of enough of the despicable types in the district – people like me – to eke out a living on the edge of the law. In some ways, living on the wrong side of the law was the most liberating profession one could have in the district, short of the landowners and shopkeepers. You couldn't tell me the average worker was happy with their lives, caught between starvation and malnourishment while working for wages that would barely pay for the ragged clothes on their backs. There was no hope to cling to in that kind of a vicious cycle.
What happy lives we lived in District 10.
"Thanks, doc," I nodded. "No sense turning down an offer like that."
"Don't worry about," he waved me off. "I know all you kids got the Reaping to worry about, from people like you to the landowners' kids. Heck, Samantha's been panicking about it for the last week, and it's only her second time. I might as well make someone's life easier."
"Hm," I rubbed my chin, staring down at my sprained wrist. "Well…at least she's got a parent watching out for her. The world needs more good people like you."
"Heh, yeah? Why's that?"
"Because of the bad people like me."