The Hunger Games belongs to Suzanne Collins. Few lines in this chapter are taken from THG and Rob Thomas' show Veronica Mars (which you should all watch).
A/N: This is the first fanfic I've written in years and the first one in English ever, so I apologize for any mistakes. I feel like you should know this is set in the same world Collins created, except there are no Games (at least not anymore) and even people from the poorer districts have cars, cell phones, etc. If you have any questions you can find me on tumblr as seaquell. Thanks to zed0hh for prereading. Feedback is appreciated!
I'm never getting married. You want an absolute? Well, there it is.
Sooner or later, the people you love let you down. They cheat, they lie, they tell you they are at a business meeting in town when in reality they are sleeping with your best friend in a cheap motel in the Seam.
But do me a favor and if it's you in there, dispense with the cuddling. This motel thirst, it is what it is. Make it quick. The person sitting in the car across the street might have a 12-year-old sister who has trouble sleeping without her, and she can't leave until she gets the money shot.
Yes, I make money by finding people's dirty secrets and giving the evidence to already suspecting something, willing to pay from their little savings, people. Yes, I'm also aware I live in district 12, where doing such thing costs me to break more laws than I can count on my fingers. I'm 16, so I'm not even supposed to have a job unless it's listed as my family's business and only merchants have that. We from the Seam are supposed to work in the mines. It's a way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another. It's to the Capitol's advantage to have us divided among ourselves.
But it's been 4 years since my father's death and we have to survive somehow. They want me to continue my parent's job? Investigating is just that.
I am doing my father's duty which really was doing the Peacekeepers' duty. When he was alive, he took every single case, always working on more than one at the same time. He didn't do it just for the money, though it was a bonus to our barely held together family of four, he did it because it was the right thing to do. You'd be surprised how many people showed up, both merchants and from the Seam, reporting stolen jewels, looking for missing pets, suspecting theft and other more personal stuff, like adultery. He made my life and so many others' better. He gave people hope.
Peacekeepers don't bother with those little things that make up our society. I'm certain they're in the district just to see us crumble down, so it's not hard to understand why they wouldn't waste their time on a runaway kitten. One of the few times you could happen to encounter a Peacekeeper is when they're patrolling at night for citizens that aren't inside their homes after 10pm. That's for the sole reason that they could get some money from the poor people as penalty. If you dare reason with them or even speak back, you get 10 whips on a good day. They're always jumpy, always quick to make the verdict, as if they're running from something. They feed off violence and, ironically, caught illegally wild turkey.
The Capitol rules we're supposed to follow are so twisted they make you think you're safe when you aren't. Citizens aren't supposed to own a gun or any kind of weapon which decreases the chances of robberies and murders, but Peacekeepers don't have trouble pulling a gun to your head for nothing. There are actually a lot of things that are punishable by death. Just because they don't bother finding the criminals doesn't mean they won't kill them when shoved in their face. I try my best to handle everything on my own, so that they no one gets punished or killed and there's only been a few extreme cases I've had to drop anonymous tips to the so called police force.
The thing is, when in danger you can't protect yourself. That's why my father died. He was shot on the street, right in the chest. There is no way dad wouldn't have seen him or her or them coming, from the angle and distance the trigger was pulled. I know he is- was more than capable of protecting himself, but his scare of the Capitol hurting him or our family probably overpowered him. Everyone has seen the damage Peacekeepers can cost on those who dared to go against them or the stupid law at the whipping post. I've seen innocent people get punished just for saying a word.
So if a word can damn nearly get you killed, why am I doing something that is really likely I'll get caught at and get killed?
I didn't use to be like this. I was quite rebellious, alright, but even I wasn't happy about the way my father provided food on the table. And then he died… and I became obsessed with the idea of finding out how he was murdered, why, by whom. I still am. I am very much my father's daughter. It doesn't help that no one, even the police force (especially the police force, they had their doubts about how our family got along so well with only my mother working as a healer and my father quitting the mines) wouldn't do anything about it. All this country did was wipe the red strains of blood off the street and give us some money (not enough, not even close to enough), more to shut us up about the ''accident'' than for us to get a start without him.
The money went as quick as it came. Mother insisted we keep the second floor of our house too – dad's office, even if we could get some cash for it. She wasn't ready to let go of him, she still isn't. I haven't seen much more emotion on her face since then. She doesn't work anymore. At first when clients still came knocking on the door I had to send them back home. Sometimes my sister Primrose felt too bad and tried to help them herself, but there wasn't much an 8-year-old could do and the little medicine we had, we kept for ourselves.
That left me. When I first started investigating I was barely 12. My first and still unresolved case is my father's murder. I needed to go through his files, see if he was working on something more serious than cheating wives and husbands, follow his every move that got him on the place he died.
I had been to my father's working place to bring him food when he was so involved with something he forgot easy routines or just to hang around with Prim after we came back from school, but I had never dared to get a close look at what exactly he was doing.
I found out for the first time what my father did behind closed doors. Pictures of secret affairs, stolen belongings, long documents and reports he couldn't have gotten legally were scattered everywhere. He was doing what the government thought to be a waste of time.
Maybe it was. I haven't heard of anyone divorcing someone in the district ever. I feel like it's sort of a mutual agreement between two people – get married, live together to spend less money, have children to continue the family business, do whatever and whoever you want… Wives and, more often than you think, husbands won't do a thing if I serve them on a silver plate a picture of their beloved one in a inappropriate position. They're just dying to know whether it's someone from the slag heap or someone closer than they think they're being cheated with. It's a small district. Well, my parents had a wonderful marriage and most money comes from those without one, so it works for me.
I focus my attention on the couple behind the window and take a snapshot. I catch the man's face, but if you didn't know for sure the woman he was with, you wouldn't put a name on her. I sigh, looking at the blurry picture. Before his death, under different circumstances, dad taught me how to use a bow. In the past three years I've perfected that skill and now I keep one in the back of the car like he used to, just in case and mostly because my mother insisted. However, I have yet to get better with his old camera.
The man closes the curtains, the woman still not in my view. Now I have to wait until they come out. Seriously people, make it quick.
I don't mind waiting, I go to bed late anyways and most times don't get any sleep at all, but while my sister was just worried when father came home late, now she's worried and not sleeping. Unlike mom, who just keeps silent, Prim insists she's over his death, but her screams at night say otherwise.
If I wasn't scared we'd get caught (by Peacekeepers, others can't really do any damage), maybe I'd take her with me on stakeouts. Prim's basically home alone, with our mother the way she is. She asks to take pictures of flowers and herbs every time we go to the meadow, so I know she's good at that or at least better than me, with my shaky hands and uncertainty. Put a bow in my hands and I'd shoot the target in a second; put a camera in my hands and you'll be wondering what the target even is.
Now that I think about it, I really should hire someone to do the job for me. That way I may be able to do most of the work from home, letters, telephone calls and all. We have more money now, enough to spare some for a fee. I can also pay in old clothes or fresh meat, caught by me, again illegally.
Remembering that one night a few months ago when I found her huddled in a corner in the closet, crying and whimpering, when it took me hours to calm her, does it for me. I decide when I go to the black market, called the Hob, next time I trade I'll spread the word around. If the merchants wanted to rat me out, they would've done it already, but those from the Seam need the job more.
About an hour later, going over my history lesson concerning a brutal competition called The Hunger Games which used to take place annually in our country years ago, I finally see movement on the porch of the couple's room they've rented in Appalachia, the cheapest motel in the district, surely not one that visitors from the Capitol would prefer. The man is coming out, his jacket in hands, the woman still standing at the doorway. They talk for a while, giving me time to get my camera ready.
He leans in to kiss her, just as I take my first shot. Second shot, she's pressed up against the door, hands in his hair. Third shot, Ellesse Mellark is watching her lover walk away with a satisfied smirk I plan to wipe right off her face.