The Last Words of a Dying Victor
Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins does. All that I own are the original characters that my brain comes up with. You'll know them, because they are not in the books, and they aren't familiar. If you can't tell the difference, I suggest that you read the book. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 1: My Beginnings
My name is Summer. Summer Remet. I was the Victor of the very first annual Hunger Games. I'm dying, you see. My days are growing short, and I have no one to which I could tell these things. They are all gone. So I am writing to you, reader, in hopes that one day you will find this, and use it to try and stop the Capitol again, and this time succeed, so let me start from the beginning. The very beginning.
My home is District 4. I was born before the Dark Days began, when the Capitol's oppression knew no bounds. My family was a humble one, making fishing nets for a living. We weren't rich by any means, but we got by. We had food to eat, a small house to live in, but most importantly, we had each other.
My father was a strong man. He loved my mother and I, and tried to keep us fed. Through his hard work, he succeeded in that. My mother was beautiful, I was told, when she was younger. In the one photograph that I have of her, she looked stunning. It was the picture of my mother and father on their wedding day. She changed, though. Her hair grew gray, and her skin began to feel the effects of the constant sun. Even though, my father still said every day that she was the most beautiful woman he knew.
At the beginning of the Dark Days, I knew nothing of the rebellion. I was little then, and I didn't understand what the importance of all of it was. I didn't know that my own father was a figurehead in the resistance of 4. He arranged all of the weapons, rebel movements, and supply lines in all of District 4. I guess that he never figured that the districts would lose the war until it was too late.
At the end of the war, my father was put on trial along with a number of other rebel leaders. He was convicted of espionage, perjury, treason, and multiple counts of first degree murder. They were some kind of Capitol officials, the people my father was accused of killing. All of the charges were true, except for the murder charges. He didn't kill them. The Capitol knew it too. He was sentenced to death. I was forced to watch my father beheaded, as punishment for the rebellion. I was eleven years old.
My mother fell into a deep depression, fueled by my father's brutal death and the constant fear that the Capitol was coming for us. Eventually, she was unable to care for me, so I went to live with my aunt, my father's sister, who was my only extended family.
My aunt took me away from the only part of District 4 that I knew. I left my best (and only) friend Jack, my mother, and my home, but most importantly, I left the sea, which was the only place that I was ever happy following my father's death.
My aunt lived far from the sea. She lived in a small village near the shipping plant that loaded all of our goods onto trains and shipped them to the Capitol. My aunt was never able to provide me with enough food to be fully nourished, because she was used to only providing for one person when it came to food-herself. She tried to feed me enough, and she was good to me. but I still ended up extremely underweight, compared to how I was before I moved in with her. With each passing hour, I ached for my home, and I couldn't wait to find a way back.
The Capitol didn't begin the Hunger Games right after the Dark Days, due to tracking down and trying 'war criminals'. But, 3 years after the Districts' defeat, it was announced that a Reaping would be held sometime in the summer. We found out in January. That was also when we found out what the Hunger Games were.
When I was 14, I finally left my aunt. I packed my few belongings into a bag and began to walk. I didn't know exactly where I was going, but all I knew was that I was going to get home. Somehow.
Two days after I ran away from my aunt, I finally was home again. Everything was familiar to me, from the calming lapping of the waves on the beach that was constantly in the background, to the smell of the salt on the air, to the screeches of the seagulls. I was ecstatic.
The first thing I did was go to Jack's house, which was on the water. His family worked as crab fishermen, and often were forced to stay out on the sea for days on end. The longest they were ever out there was a week, because the crabs refused to be caught. So, the peacekeepers kept them out there until they met their quota.
Luckily, Jack's family had just gotten back from a trip, and he was sitting out on his front porch, cleaning the traps. I could hear his parents yelling to each other, trying to get the fishing boat situated at the dock.
"Jack!"
Jack looked up from his trap cleaning, trying to see who was yelling at him. His longish dark hair stuck out in every direction, just as it always had. His hair always had a problem with staying neat. When I was little, I told him once that I thought that his hair and hairbrush needed counseling. They had a bad relationship. He laughed, then promptly shoved me off of the boat we were on.
As Jack held his hand up to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight, a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He stood up, threw aside the crab trap on his lap, and jumped off of his porch, arms stretched out wide to receive me.
I ran as fast as I could, and was instantly engulfed in one of Jack's famous bear hugs. He was squeezing me so tight, that I couldn't breathe. I could barely choke out one word, "J-Jack..."
"Oh, sorry," he said as he pulled away. That was when I noticed how much he had changed since we last saw each other.
He had had a growth spurt, and grown a good five inches, two taller than me. His muscles had gotten bigger and stronger, and it was obvious that all of the work on the water was doing him good in that department. I would never tell him this, but he's grown quite... well... attractive, I guess.
"About time you showed up around here," Jack said laughing. "Where have you been? You never said where you were going."
"My aunt took me over. Why, are you obligated to know where I am every day, all the time?"
"Well no, you just... never said goodbye..."
I can tell from the look in his eyes that I truly hurt him. I see how, I mean, your best friend just disappears off the face of the earth for almost three years, and you don't know what happened to them. No word, no rumors, nothing. Not a clue.
"Listen, I'm sorry. My aunt just whisked me off, and left me no time to say goodbye. Not to you, not to my home, not even to my mother."
He looks at the ground for a second, then looks at me again. He looks like he's about to say something, then thinks better about it. "Got your letters. Never could write back though. Didn't know your address."
He shifts around uncomfortably, then starts to mess with his hair a bit.
"Jackson Silas Odair, I've known you for how many years?" I ask him. "A lot..." "How many exactly?" "Ten years," he mutters. "That means that I know you pretty well," I pause to look him in the eyes. "What aren't you telling me?"
He sighs, then takes a deep breath.
"Your mother is dead. Been dead for about two and a half years."
This news absolutely floors me. "H-How?" I manage to spit out. "Yellow fever outbreak a couple months after you left. A dozen more from our village, more in the others up the coast. I'm so sorry, I know how close you two were."
He's right, we were close. She was all I had.
In my stunned silence, he wraps his arms around me and holds me tight, just like he used to do whenever I was stuck at his house during a summer thunderstorm when we were kids. He knew how scared I was of the thunder, so he would wrap his arms around me and hold me like I was his own sister until the storm was over or until I fell asleep.
After a few minutes, he led me in the house and made some tea. We drank it in silence. After we were finished, it was already twilight. He took me to the bedroom where both he and his parents slept. It's exactly as I remember it. Two tiny beds with thin sheets and a handmade quilt on each one, both on either side of a small window. "You can stay here with us." He smiled softly, then tucked me into his bed. I smiled a little, then whispered an almost inaudible, "Thanks." He smiled again, left after that.
I heard him come back in a couple of hours later. I can't sleep tonight, so I pretend to be. He tries to be quiet, but the creaking floorboards give him away. He pulls up the covers to my shoulders, then softly brushes some stray hair off of my face. "Night, Summer," he whispers.
And Jack, being Jack, curls up on the floor at the foot of the bed. This makes me smile. Truly smile. With the knowledge that Jack was there, a feeling of peace spreads all over my body. I fall into a dreamless sleep in a matter of minutes.
Okay, I know it's relatively short, but I'll do the Reaping in the next chapter. Please review! Constructive criticism is welcomed. Thanks!