Here's part three, you guys!
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I can barely hear Arista calling me, but I ignore it. I rush home, walking as fast as I can without running, because I want to finish my work so that I would be allowed to watch the remainder of the Games.
I feel anticipation at the pit of my stomach, because really, what could prepare you to see your parents fight for their lives?
I do my chores in silence, not even bothering to annoy Dylan, which earned me a strange look from him. When he asked, I simply answered that I'm too tired.
His bedtime came and as usual, Mother takes him upstairs to be tucked in. Daddy and I wait in the living room and I notice that Daddy has his sketchbook with him. He is quietly drawing something that looks like a monstrous dog with long fur, baring its sharp teeth.
"Daddy?" I hesitate. "Hm?" he replies, not looking up from his drawing.
"What is that?"
He pauses. I notice his fingers tighten around the charcoal pencil he's holding. I wait for a snap or an angry response, but instead, he smiles at me and says, "You'll find out later."
I'm sure I'm going to be seeing that dog in the arena.
Mother comes back downstairs and we gather at the couch again. She puts in the tape into the player and joins us.
The anthem plays again and I see a flat expanse of land, surrounded by a lake and trees. It zooms into a large golden horn, where a large supply of weapons and other necessities were piled. My mother calls it the Cornucopia and explains that it was the site for the opening bloodbath in the Games each year as the tributes risk their lives to get supplies. Some use it as an opportunity to take down as many tributes as possible. A little ironic, in my opinion. You choose between getting things to sustain you and risk getting killed at the same time or leaving with next to nothing and die of natural causes. I shake my head to get the thought out of my head as the screen changes into rapid shots of the twenty-four teenagers all standing in metal plates as a voice announces, "Ladies and Gentlemen, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!"
A countdown begins. Sixty seconds. I ask my parents what happens if you step off the plates before the sixty seconds are over and my father gives me a simple, wry answer.
"You get blown to bits," he said. "There are landmines buried around your plate. It deactivates after the countdown is over."
I force my eyes back into the screen. Forty-five seconds left. I find my parents amidst the tributes, my mother in deep thought and my father watching her intently. She changes her stance, looking like she's about to run for the Cornucopia when their eyes meet and he shakes her head, as if telling her not to engage herself in the fighting.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. My mother still looks confused. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
And the tributes all dash out of their plates.
Mother's feet shuffles and she grabs the loaf of bread and the plastic sheet in front of her. Then she sprints to snatch an orange backpack a little further away.
And the killing begins. Left, right and center, tributes are starting to kill each other off. Some retreat quickly to the forest. The tributes from District 1 and 2, or the Careers, as my parents called them, mercilessly stabbed, speared and slashed at anyone within reach. A boy starts to tug at the backpack Mother has her hands on, but soon he coughs up blood in her face and falls on the ground, dead. I see a knife sticking out of his back, the girl from District 2 sneering at him. She reaches for another knife and throws it at my mother, who was already running away to the woods. She almost gets her, but Mother uses the pack to shield her head and continues to run. The girl looked like she was contemplating chasing Mother for a moment, before turning her back and re-joining the bloodbath.
My father however, was on a different track. He's now talking to a Career, the big, brutish one, who nodded at him. A smirk crosses the boy's features as he turns away and kills the girl from District 3, who was trying to get her hands on a knife.
The bloodbath continues. At the end of it, eleven tributes are dead and the Careers started cheering at the sound of the cannons.
Another girl was killed that night. She was found by the Careers when she lit a fire and was stabbed in the stomach. Then they left her to die.
Daddy came back to her, in the pretense of killing her for good, but he simply held her hand and comforted her until she died.
"I was nearby, you know," Mother said. "I was up in a tree and I was so scared they'd find me."
"This is awful," I say, turning to Mother. "Why did they let it happen for seventy-five years?"
"Fear, sweetheart," Mother replies sadly. "The Capitol had absolute power and the Districts are too scared to incite another rebellion, especially since the last one ended badly. You see the punishment they suffered after the Dark Days. Would you want to attempt that again?"
I shook my head, understanding where they're coming from.
We continued to watch the Games. My mother dropped a hive of tracker jackers on the Career pack, and killed two girls in the process. She also got stung. She staggered around before wrenching the bow and arrows away from the dead body of the District 1 girl.
"What happened?" I asked Mother, "When you get stung, I mean."
"It causes extreme pain," she explained. "And hallucinations. It causes you to see things that would terrify you."
My father appeared and pushed her away from the scene, but not quickly enough. The brutish boy from District 2 saw him help her and he turned to my father with a manic grin. He drew his sword and started slashing away madly. Fortunately, his aim was affected by the tracker jacker stings he received, but he managed to stab Daddy in the leg before the venom got the better of him and he collapsed. Daddy fled the scene before the rest of them returned, eventually setting himself by the stream, disguising himself with mud and weeds.
Mother woke up from her venom-induced sleep, and then teamed up with a little girl named Rue, who helped heal her stings. She destroyed the supplies the Careers stashed near the lake, and she explained that she lost hearing in her left ear because of it. Rue was killed by the boy from District 1, and he was killed by my mother in return. Mother held Rue as she took her last breaths, singing her the song she now sings to us before we sleep. I saw my mother's lip tremble as we watched the little girl slip away and I wrapped my arms around her.
Then it was announced that two winners could win if they came from the same district.
Mother went looking for Daddy at once and I can't help but sigh when she did. She took him into a makeshift cave and nursed him back to health.
The one thing that made me a little queasy was all the kissing.
I've gotten used to their affection at home, but it's one thing to see it while I was growing up, it's another to see them as teenagers. I feel a little like I'm invading their privacy.
My father was getting worse, his injured leg causing blood poisoning. A feast was announced, and my mother had to drug him so that she could get his medicine. He slept on while she went to the Cornucopia.
"I still resent that, you know," Daddy told her. "You could have died."
"It's been more than twenty years, Peeta, get over it."
The girl from Five ran off with her pack. Mother went to get hers, but she was stopped when the girl from Two threw a knife at her. The girl caught her and was about to cut up her face, taunting her about Rue, when the boy from Eleven yanked her off and killed her with a rock.
He looked at Mother, but eventually let her go. Mother set off to go back to the cave, still bleeding, and as soon as she administrated the medicine to Daddy, she passed out.
The boys from Two and Eleven had a battle in the middle of the pouring rain. In the end, the boy from Two won, but he didn't get off easy. He was badly injured, but he had a half-crazed look in his eye as he started hunting down the remaining tributes.
Meanwhile, my parents were trapped in the cave, where they received a lavish banquet from sponsors. My father told my mother about how he fell in love with her. And then I realized the meaning behind the red dress my father gave me for my first day of school. I scrunched up my nose in disgust at the –for lack of better word- making out they were doing in the cave. That made them laugh.
Once the rain cleared up, my parents began hunting. They separated- my mother hunted for game while my father went to pick berries. I know only too well how heavy his tread was and I know my mother was thinking about it too, since she smirked, which earned her a scowl from Daddy.
"I know I'm loud," he said.
"We all know, Peeta."
The sound of the cannon made both of them freeze. The girl from Five, who I just realized was following Daddy, dropped dead after eating a handful of the berries she stole from him.
Mother scolded Daddy for not responding to her signal, then she noticed the berries in his hand. She explained that it was extremely poisonous, and they watched as the girl was taken away by a hovercraft.
"It's just you and the boy from Two," I found myself saying.
They nodded.
I shifted my position so that my legs are tucked close to my body. Mother put her arm around me. I have an uneasy feeling in my gut and I knew. The Games are about to end.
A pack of large dogs started chasing the boy from Two. It was worse than anything I have ever seen. Something was unsettling about them, but I didn't realize what it was until my mother pointed it out.
"They're the dead tributes," she said, answering the unspoken question in my mind. "I don't know what they did, but they somehow made the mutts look like the dead tributes."
Twenty-three of them. They were chasing after the remaining tributes, their sharp teeth bared. My parents ran to the Cornucopia and climbed it, but the boy from Two caught my father in a headlock, suffocating him and threatening to drag him down in case my mother decided to shoot him.
Instead, my mother shot his hand, which released his grip, and he fell off the Cornucopia, right into the awaiting pack. The footage is cut to the next morning, where my mother finally decided to kill the boy and shot him in the head, ending his agony. A hovercraft took him away and the dogs left the scene.
"This is where…?" I began, but the announcer cut across me, announcing that the rule allowing two victors was revoked.
My father threw his knife into the lake at the same time my mother aimed her arrow at him. She dropped her bow and stepped away from him. He walked- limped- toward her and shoved the bow and arrow back in her hands, convincing her to kill him.
They argue for a while, but then he tore the bandages off his leg. My mother desperately tried to put it back and they argue some more.
"Listen," Daddy said as he helped her up. "We both know they have to have a victor. It can only be one of is. Please, take it. For me. I love you, Katniss, and I'd rather die that have to live without you."
But my mother was already fumbling with a pouch on her belt. Daddy stopped her immediately.
"Trust me."
They stared at each other for a moment then he let her hand go. She divided the berries between the two of them. "On the count of three?"
He kissed her. "The count of three."
They stand, back to back, their unoccupied hands locked tight. Then they start counting.
They had just put the berries in their mouths when the trumpets sounded and the panicked voice of the announcer declared them the winners. They spit the berries out and rinsed their mouths with water from the lake and then fell into each other's arms. Then they showed the audiences in the Capitol cheering for their victory. Finally the hovercraft comes and takes them away and the last shot was of my mother banging her fists into the glass barrier that separated her from my father.
The anthem played and the screen showed the Capitol seal. Then it faded to black.
My father stood up to turn the television off. My mother turned to me.
"That was awful," I told her. "I can't imagine how horrible it was for you guys. Is that why you kept having nightmares?"
She nodded. "I don't want to scare you, Lira," she said. "But your father and I agreed that it would be best if we didn't hide this from you."
"I'm glad you showed me," I said. "I'm glad, because this way, I got to know you better. I understand why you're like this."
"I want you to know that we-" she nodded towards Daddy, "didn't want to kill anyone. But you have to understand, it was-"
"Kill or get killed," I interrupted her. "I know. I want you to know that it doesn't matter to me what happened. I just wanted to know."
"Did it scare you?" Daddy asked me.
"A little," I admitted. There was no point in lying that I would not be having nightmares. "But I can handle it."
"Is there anything you want to ask us?"
"What happened afterwards? Sounds to me like it isn't something the Capitol would forgive easily."
"No, it's not," my mother agreed. "The Capitol threatened us and our families. Your father and I… we paid the price by being forced back in the arena."
I bit my lip. I don't know what to say anymore, really. They must be tired of hearing sympathy from others, tired of hearing people say how sorry they are that my parents had to endure what they did. Surely they don't want to hear that from their daughter. So I told them the only first thing that came to my mind.
"Thank you."
My mother looked startled. "For what?"
"For telling me, for all your sacrifices…" I look up to both of them. "Really, if I thought I was proud to be your daughter before… it's nothing to what I feel now. I'm glad I'm your daughter. I'm so honored to have you as my parents."
Mother's lip began to tremble. She engulfed me in a tight hug and I felt her tears. "Thank you, Lira. I love you so much, sweetheart."
"Love you too, Mom."
Daddy came and joined us. The three of us stayed like that for a while. Mother was still crying, but I knew she was happy. Daddy smiled at me and I smiled back, knowing that I couldn't have possibly said anything better. But it's true- I am glad to be the Mockingjay's daughter.
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There! Done! I will be posting other one-shots, and I'm taking requests! (I mean, if I manage to write something for it). Review! Until next time!