My first fanfic! Please read and review ;D (Mags and Panem doesn't belong to me, it's all Suzanne Collins' creation)

I've lived a long life. Eighty years. Most people in Panem can't say the same.

Even though I wish I didn't, I remember everything that happened. Before the Games. Before the Uprising.

I was born in a small house in District 4. I could see the ocean from my window. My sister Lisa had taught me to swim when I was young. She'd laughed and splashed water at my brother Matthew. Matt would always splash back, grinning.

4-year-old Maggie didn't understand when Father came home tense, or when Mother and Father would talk quietly with each other, or when Lisa stopped playing with Matt and I. It was strange. Matt knew, but he didn't tell me. I thought they were keeping a secret, planning a surprise. I didn't know that people would start screaming, that men in suits would attack us, here, in District 4. They used strange weapons, and killed everyone they could see.

Lisa grabbed Matt's hand and told me to hold on tight to her back. She ran, out onto the beach and up a hill and into a cave. She let me down and told us to stay. Matt tried to keep her back, but Lisa shook him off and promised to come back.

She came back. But Mother and Father didn't.

Afterward, Lisa told us to stay with Aunt Julie. I heard her say to her, "I know, but this is more important. I'm trying to create a better future for them."

I didn't understand, but later I did.

After the fighting, Lisa didn't come back. Aunt Julie said that she was gone, but she fought bravely. We went to a ceremony, a funeral, of Mother and Father and Lisa. I cried and clung on to Matt's hand. His face was grave. "Too grave for an eight-year-old," Aunt Julie said.

Lisa had tried to make a better future for us. But when, the next day, we stood in the market square of District 4 and the announcements came on, about District 13, and the Hunger Games, all I could think was, They died for nothing.

And it was true. Twenty-four kids, ages 12-18, were sent into an arena a week later. They were dressed up, videotaped, and interviewed. And they had to kill each other.

Bravely, they refused. They talked scathingly of the Capitol in their 3 minutes of showtime. When the gong sounded, the twenty-four children sat on their plates and refused to move. The Gamemakers from the Capitol tried to force them to kill each other. They sent animals, floods, fire, thunder, everything. Nothing worked. The kids sat on their plates, and died of thirst and starvation. And Aunt Julie had smiled, and said that it was good. "An honorable death."

I could still see the faces of the starving tributes - no, children. They shouldn't be remembered as tributes. But that's how I remembered them. The girl who burned to death in a Capitol-made fire. The boy who got torn to pieces by Capitol-made wolves. The boy who lasted longer than the others, and fell over his plate, dying.

None of them screamed. None of them cried. "They died defying the Capitol," Aunt Julie would say proudly.

But the year after, the kids immediately started killing each other, and Matt covered my eyes with his hand. But I could still hear the commentary, the screams, the final winner's name. And I overheard someone in the crowd mutter, "I wonder what they did to the first tributes' families."

Matt covered my eyes every time a death was coming, but sometimes there was no warning. When the screen suddenly cut to a boy stabbing someone else with a sword, I gasped. But soon I got used to it, used to seeing the blood and weapons and death, and that scared me more than anything.

The Hunger Games was the norm, and I tried to remember life before them, when we didn't have to watch people killing others on TV.

Then Matt turned twelve, and his name appeared in the reaping bowl. Aunt Julie and I were afraid for him. But he was safe, and others were called, and I saw one twelve-year-old cry on the podium, and I thought of Matt.

When I turned twelve, I had to put my name in the reaping bowl also. I was worried, but Matt had 5 slips of paper in there, so I was more worried for him.

That year, there was a volunteer. A big eighteen-year-old, who looked like he had been training to kill. Matt said that he probably did train himself, just for the Games. I wondered what his family was thinking.

But then he came back, as the winner. And a murderer. He lived in the little village set aside just for future winners, and stayed away from everyone. There were rumors about him. He had no family. He killed his family. His family was killed by the Capitol. He practiced killing on animals and left the bodies on the ground. He bought weapons and burglar alarms. He didn't talk to anyone. On the Victory Tour, he said few words and spent most of the time standing still with his fists clenched. Others had to talk for him.

We all avoided him, the person who had killed a girl with his bare hands, who gutted a boy with a sword and walked away emotionlessly, who stabbed a boy in the head with a dagger, who killed a girl so slowly with a smile on his face. He was almost a legend, but not a good one.

When I was fifteen years old, my name was called.

"Mags Davis."

So, what did you think? Leave a review!

~Cindy