Red Bane

by dghucek

Viviante De Losi hasn't always lived in the Capitol. A new, up-and-coming fashion designer, Viviante crosses paths with the first year handsome head game-maker Seneca Crane, and things spiral from a simple conversation. Her true past, her feelings about the games, even her very family and friends she holds dear, come at risk as she begins to fall for the new game-maker.

Do you honestly think it's been that easy? I heard people in the districts complain every day, that their lives went to shit while those in the Capitol had it good. The populace of the Capitol talked of a simpler life with altruistic means, spouting claims of jealousy against people in the Districts for their simple "effortless" lives. It took every inch of me to keep silent and not tell them, both sides, that they were being selfish, complaining about something very fixable. Of course, those complaining in the lesser districts had more credibility to their claims, but what about my district? What about those before it, those after it? The people in four, my people, had it better than most. They went on with their lives, continued to have a second nature for water, and sent their children to train, to volunteer for the games like animals sent to slaughter. The years I lived in four, my childhood years, I heard shouts of glory and praise when it came to the games, because we were all conditioned that way, to love the Capitol. Don't try to tell me that I formed that opinion myself, because everyone in District four had an open mind when it comes to the games, to the Capitol. We may have all been "angry fishermen" to the rest of the districts, but we knew how to thrive. I myself wasn't trained for the games, because luckily my mother had a good head on her shoulders, I realize that now. My brother born five years my junior wasn't trained either, at my father's insistence. He wanted him to be a fisherman. My neighbors trained for the games, and volunteered. Alister. He was only fifteen, but he had a skill with nets, like many young boys in District four.

I was raised with death all around me, but those doubtful in district twelve, in district eleven and ten, they don't believe that anyone with as much comfort as us wealthy fisherman could grow up surrounded by as much pain that they had experienced in one day. Once, when Alister and I were both fourteen, we went to the pier and caught ourselves each a fish. Small fish, nothing to brag about, but we told our parents we were going to cook them ourselves and eat out on the floating deck, in the middle of the lake. We left the basket by itself for ten minutes and came back to find a stray cat, a nasty full grown thing, finishing off my fish. He had eaten the meat from Alister's fish, and was pecking away at mine, contaminating it. Alister's training had begun when he was five years old for the games, only five, and he snapped the cat's neck while I had to close my eyes and listen to it meow at first, helplessly, and then scream for help. So don't try to tell me that death wasn't around me in District Four. The games didn't just make killers into those who were in it.

Alister volunteered and entered the games, and I watched on the television in my parent's house, sitting too close to the screen, when he was slaughtered at the cornucopia by an arrow to the eye, only two minutes after the games began.

My name was never called, but if it had been, I wouldn't have worried too much. The boys always had a volunteer to take their place, but the girls had one about every other year or so. Luckily, my name was never called. My mother told me it would have been an honor, and my father said nothing about it. He talked much better to my brother than to me.

In the later years, when I did visit the lower districts of eleven and twelve, I understood why they took the Capitol name in vain. As a child I looked down on the lower districts, because any child knows how to count. When I was there, I looked into the slums and I saw the men off to work at the mines, their faces dirty as they coughed the very coal they collected. I saw how empty, how small those houses were when I went into them, how poor the people were in health and possessions. I saw the death in those districts as well as my own, so don't accuse me of being heartless, just because I'm one of them. I haven't always been, I wasn't born into this. Does it make me cold hearted if I chose to come here? I did not participate in the spirit of the games, I did not encourage them in the courts or the local eateries like the rest of the people here, because I have been on both sides of the coin, and I know what it's like to be surrounded by death just as much as anyone did in the days of Panem, of the districts.

So don't tell me that my life has been easy.