A/N: Hello, readers! The White Jackal here. This is the first chapter of the first story on my new account. The subsequent chapters should be longer, but I'm mostly testing out the waters with this story right now. I don't own The Hunger Games or any of the brilliant characters, scenes, or dialogue our lovely Ms. Collins created. I just own the OCs and the narrative you don't recognize. R&R please!
"It would be a bad precedent."
"We can't have another Hunger Games... This is why we rebelled."
"No, for me and Finnick."
"Yes, for Prim."
"Give them a taste of their own medicine."
"I'm with the Mockingjay."
"Seems fair to me."
I woke up to Mother coughing. I sat up, and Marina stirred next to me. She was pressed up against the wall, the thin sheet we'd been given wrapped tight around her shoulders. My sister and I had never shared a room, let alone a bed before this, and I knew she hadn't been sleeping well. Marina always liked sleeping alone better. Everyone always joked that I could sleep anywhere.
"Axis Brassher could fall asleep during a fireworks display at the Presidential Mansion," they would laugh, "with every Victor present and every sweet laid out before him."
But that wasn't true. I'd barely slept at all the last few weeks. I couldn't block out Mother's illness two feet away. I couldn't ignore my older sister shivering and tossing next to me. And I couldn't shut my eyes without seeing my father being dragged away by the Rebels after they and their precious Mockingjay took the Capitol.
Our family was one of the first they'd come for, of course. My father, Victros Brassher, was the general of all the Panemian Peacekeepers. We'd lived in District Eight for a few years when he was the Head Peacekeeper there, but after Father's promotion we were relocated to the Capitol. We didn't have the narrow window of escape that some of the other Capitol citizens had in the Districts. The Rebels' president had barely been in the Capitol long enough to smell the stench of burning buildings and bodies before their soldiers—those District Thirteen people that weren't supposed to exist—busted in our door and dragged us all away.
That was almost a month ago, I thought—it was hard to tell with no windows in our cell—and I hadn't seen my father since. They separated me from my mother and sister for a few days, but then they locked us into the tiny cell that was our new home—I heard some of the Rebels talking about shortage of space in their prison.
There are just too many dangerous women and children.
I grit my teeth, staring up at the stained ceiling. I could hear a baby crying down the hall. The real Capitol prisoners—influential people like my father—were held in a different facility, or so I'd heard.
"This little holding space is a paradise compared to that place," a guard said, sneering and spitting, when I'd asked about my father two weeks ago.
There was nothing paradisiacal about our prison. It was always freezing, and the beds were almost as hard as the concrete floor. The only reason Marina and I weren't sick and my mother wasn't dead was because of our clothing. We'd been snatched out of our home too fast to grab any warmer clothing—not that the Rebels would have let us—but my father was smart. He'd been readying us to leave the city once the Rebels attacked, so we were wearing traveling clothes when arrested. Yes, General Victros Brassher was smart. He just wasn't fast enough.
I pulled my coat tighter around me. I'd lost a decent bit of weight, and the jacket was nearly too big now. But it was still warm, and the Rebels still hadn't taken it from me. Marina shivered again in her sleep, and I gave her the rest of the sheet. I slid closer to her, hoping she wouldn't wake up when I touched her back. Marina hated being touched in her sleep, but I needed some warmth.
"You owe me for the sheet," I whispered when she grunted and nudged my shin with her heel.
"You c-can have m-mine, A-Axis…"
I turned over. Mother's weak eyes glowed in the dim lighting. She'd had them colored right before the Rebels attacked, and some of the fluorescent purple still remained. But I could see brown around the fake violet, and I was finally starting to notice how much I looked like her.
"I'm fine, Mother." I climbed off the cot, hiding the wince when my bare feet—they took my shoes a few days into our captivity, checking for hidden notes or codes or something, and hadn't given them back—hit the freezing floor. I sat on the edge of Mother's cot and pulled my legs underneath me to warm them. "I was just teasing Marina."
Mother smiled and reached for my hand. "I k-know you're l-lying."
I wished my hands weren't so cold, the traitors. "You're colder than me… You should take my—"
"Keep your c-coat." Mother stopped my hands before I could unbutton my jacket. She had this uncanny ability to read my mind that I could never understand. She finished my sentences more than I did. Though she'd been sleeping more and more lately, and my voice sounded lonely and strange without hers. "Y-You and… your sister have alr-ready g-given me… m-more than e-enough." She coughed again, and I tucked the blanket—the only blanket—tighter around her body.
She's a lot skinnier, too… More than me or Marina…
"You've been trying to eat, haven't you?"
She nodded and smiled again, wiping her mouth quickly. She thought she could keep me from seeing the blood.
"You don't look like it…"
I didn't believe she'd been eating, no matter how much she insisted. At the beginning, she'd only eat a few bites and pass the rest to Marina and me. I'd let her do it because I was fifteen and stupid and hungry, and I thought we'd be out of the cells once Father talked to some people and straightened everything out. He'd always been able to do that, even when I broke one of President Snow's backyard windows playing catch with his grandson.
But that was before we saw the broadcast with Finnick Odair about President Snow, and that was before I realized that nothing in the world made sense any more, including the president and my father and my future.
"You s-shouldn't say t-things like that… to your m-mother." She laughed a little, but that turned into another bad cough.
"Did you wake her up?" Marina was at my elbow before I had time to notice she was awake. She was so fast and quiet. In our combat lessons with Father she was always better at the stealth exercises.
"N-No," Mother answered for me, even though I was shaking my head already. "H-He's b-been… a p-perfect angel."
"I doubt that," Marina said. She smirked, but when she brushed back my overgrown hair I felt her hand shaking. I saw the fear in her thin face, too. It made me even more afraid. She was always braver than me.
But we were Brasshers, and we'd been taught to be stronger. So we both hid our fear and tried to talk about Father's pet bird wreaking havoc on whichever Rebel was living in our stolen home.
I tried to pretend I hadn't seen the soldiers setting up wires and explosives while we were being arrested. Nothing and no one could have survived that kind of blast—I'd seen the Rebels' bombs out my windows, obliterating my friends' houses and half of my school—but it was easier to pretend the life we'd loved was still somehow waiting for us outside this nightmare.