A/n. Hi all, this is my first fanfics so the characters may be OOC and please pardon me with any mistake, especially grammar mistake cause I'm not a native speaker and I don't have a beta. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
All characters in the Hunger Games belong to Suzanne Collins.
x
"No. It can't be."
I slowly get up while still feeling nauseous. After I flush the toilet I move to the sink to clean my mouth and getting rid of the rancid smell of vomit. I look at my reflection in the mirror and thinking out loud, "no, it can't be. It's impossible." I stay by the sink for a moment before I rush out to the bedroom as fast as my weak body could carry me.
"Where is it, where is it?," I say as I rummage through my bag. I'm usually organized but just at the time when I need it the most, I can't find my planner. "Dammit!," I exclaim. Frustrated, I shake my bag to get everything out and I still can't find it. "In the living room," I think out loud again.
There it is! I see the book lying on my coffee table. I quickly grab it and flip through the pages and there, marked in the brightest pink ink I could ever find, written the appointment for my last shot, right after the Games.
"Darn!" I exclaim again. I don't usually swear this much, hell, I don't swear at all, but this is not the time to worry about manners. "No no no no no," I am gripping my hair as I sit down. Trying to calm myself, I'm thinking of the time I had the last shot before that. I go to the shelves where I keep all my daily planners since I was five. Flipping through the pages of the one from a year ago, I gasp in horror as I read the date and realize that it's been more than a year before I got my last one.
"Gosh Effie, that's why normal people get a 5-year shot, so that these things won't happen," I say to myself. But here I am, a hopeless romantic, believing that I might find the one and settle down. Well, I have to prepare for it, my prince charming can come anytime and I can't have a family with him if I'm still sterile, so then I settled for the annual one. Stupid, stupid me. I don't know why at twenty-eight I still believe the fairy tales that I read when I was a child. This wouldn't be a problem if I have a monogamous relationship, but being pregnant from a one-night stand is nothing that I'm prepared for.
I slowly walk back to the couch where my current planner is. I skim through the pages weakly as I try to figure out who the father might be. Of course I don't write my 'conquers', as my friends call it, on my journal, it's not like they are scheduled, but at least I can guess from the appointments that I've had. I groan at the sight of the number of dates I've been to in the past months. At least it's consensual, I kept telling myself every time I felt the need to justify my unladylike behavior, remembering the time Ophelia boasted around how she almost have enough to "spend a night with Finnick Odair." Finnick may not show it, but I know the womanizing is not by choice. Just like the pretty siblings from District One. It's too often an occasion that good looking victors sleep around in the Capitol for it to be a coincidence. Not all pretty people sleep around. But then there's me. Although in my defense, it's just my way of coping with the games; Haymitch has his alcohol and I have my late night adventures.
I never thought being an escort would be difficult. I never underestimated it needless to say, it's one of the most coveted jobs in the capitol and just the perfect way to climb the social ladder. However, the emotional part of it is nothing as what I expected. Ever since I was young I couldn't wait for that time of the year. I had my favorites, cheered when they won a fight and survived, and cried when they were gone. Just gone, not dead. No, I never thought of them that way. Thinking back, it's sickening how I used to see the Games, treating it as an entertainment.
It all changed during my first year as an escort, meeting them and knowing them personally makes it all so difficult; it was all too real. The fear in their eyes as they stand in the sun wishing that it's not their name I fish out, their shaking bodies as they take the steps to the podium, and their diminishing hope as it gets closer to the Games.
"What's wrong sweetheart? The Games is not all pride and glory, is it?," Haymitch once asked with a smirk. I don't remember saying anything back to him, I was just sobbing and sobbing. That was the day my first tributes died in bloodbath. They are dead, I then realized. There's no one I could talk to; to say that the Games is awful is just outright traitorous to the Capitol. So I kept to myself and just tried to find some way to make it bearable. At first I tried to busy myself with work but there is very little work in the months between Games. There was the partying and other social events, but they all soon bore me. After a while, the Capitol men can't keep me interested in the long term either and I turn to the physical aspect of it.
Snapping back to reality, I notice I didn't have any date a month before the Games. How could I when I was too nervous for the reaping, I couldn't get myself aroused.
"No…" I say softly as realization hit me and my planner slips from my hand with a thump on the floor. There was only one person who I had sex with in that period. Haymitch.