a/n: This story idea crept up on me, clobbered me over the head, and wouldn't leave me alone.
This prologue is set rather late in the story. Most of the rest of it, as per the story summary, will take place much earlier, as Katniss and Peeta grow up together in the time before Panem was created. Despite the tone of this prologue I do promise a happy ending. Eventually. ;)
I hope you enjoy. And if you'd like to find me on tumblr I'm there as jeeno2.
They gather together in the town square – every man, woman and child, all of them huddled very close together despite the sweltering heat of the day.
They don't know what to expect this morning.
There have been new rumors every single day, of course. It's the way of things when people are scared but don't really know what they're scared of. The most terrifying rumors have been flying around the coal mines and the downtown business district for weeks.
But no one really knows anything.
Not even their mayor, apparently, the man to whom they always turned for news of the world in the Times Before. The lost, terrified look on his face as he takes the stage at the front of the square makes the knot of worry that Peeta's been carrying in the pit of his belly tighten painfully.
Peeta looks down at his children. At Rose who, at age five, thinks they're here today for a parade. She's looking expectantly at the stage, and at the mayor standing on it, a smile on her face, oblivious to the fear rolling off the grown-ups around her in waves. And he looks over at three-year-old Al, who's grumpy today, a hot and fussy toddler in desperate need of a nap.
"Peeta," his wife says quietly from behind him.
He turns around and looks at Katniss. The love of his life. The little girl he stole bread for when they were only children. The teenager he took beatings for. The beautiful woman he married and with whom he's created this wonderful life that appears, now, on the cusp of being torn to pieces.
"Hi," he says quietly. His voice shakes as he gets out the single syllable; but that can't be helped. He grasps at Katniss' hand and squeezes it in a gesture he hopes reassures. She squeezes back.
And then it begins.
They start with the girls. It's immediately clear that children under the age of twelve, and adults over the age of eighteen, are exempt from whatever it is the new government has planned. Peeta breathes an involuntary sigh of relief when he realizes that this will not affect his young family. But then hates himself for it a moment later when he realizes, suddenly, how many Hawthornes, Undersees, and others will not be spared.
A well-dressed woman standing on the stage plucks a scrap of paper from a large glass bowl and calls out the name of a fourteen-year-old girl that's worked in the bakery for Peeta on occasion. The girl is awkwardly prodded onto the stage by several armed soldiers. The girl's mother, standing only a few feet away from the Mellarks, begins to scream.
Next, an eighteen year old boy who Peeta has never seen before is called. He puffs out his chest like the man he thinks he is as he walks, unaided, to the front of the crowd. He climbs the stairs to the stage two at a time, fearless in the way of eighteen year old boys everywhere.
There are speeches afterwards. Speeches about how this is a punishment for them all, but also a reminder. A lesson.
Peeta tunes them all out. He tunes out the hushed whispers and muted cries of his friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
He closes his eyes and clutches his family to his chest. He is shaking, and Katniss throws her arms around his neck to calm him.
She begins singing very quietly; so quietly he's certain she only intends for him to hear it. It's something he hasn't heard her sing since they were five years old children together, in Mrs. Debante's kindergarten classroom.
He stops listening to anything but his wife's voice. He wills the beautiful song to bring him back to the Time Before, when everything was good and life was just one happy adventure after another.
Against all odds… it works. For a moment.