Just to let y'all know, sometimes I change the words to the songs I use so they fit in with the story better.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.
Home again, been back for six months. Life is good, despite the fact that Enobaria gets here tomorrow, with her newly implanted golden fangs that she showed off in District 1 a week ago. My favorite thing to do now is sing to Riv and Rivi, as Marlin and I call them. Since District 4 is stricter than most districts, the peacekeepers made a new rule where even victors have to go to school until they're nineteen.
Since I turned nineteen in July, I can stay home. But Marlin stopped going to school when he was fifteen, so Snow made him go back to school, but just for this year, thank god. He's probably the worst student at the entire school, because the teacher's can't give him punishments for not doing homework. It's odd not having him the entire day, but I have Riv and Rivi, so I'm kept busy.
"You are my sunshines,
My brightestest sunshines,
You make me glad, each and every day.
Oh, you don't know dears, how much I love you.
They can't take my sunshines away."
But even as I sing it to them, I know it isn't true. They can take my sunshines away. Wait twelve years, and they'll be in the reaping bowl, waiting to be shipped to the arena and to their death. To think that I possibly have only twelve years until they take two of my three sunshines away is almost unbearable. Hasn't the Capitol done enough to my family without hurting my children? They gave Marlin and I the nightmares that make us wake up screaming every night, making the twins start crying, which results in another two hours of singing to them softly to get them to go to sleep.
Speaking of the Capitol, Snow has written to us several times, imploring us to send pictures of Riv and Rivi to the main Capitol newspaper so everyone can see what they look like. Marlin and I don't even hesitate to refuse. The twins don't know their parents are famous. And they don't need to.
~Seven months Later~
Seven months later, I find out that Beetee's prediction is correct. The little girl from District 7, Johanna Mason, takes home the crown of the 63rd Hunger Games, becoming District 7's first female victor. Where my crown was encrusted with pearls and opals, hers is thin flexible twigs with green leaves woven through metal.
She surprised us all, even Blight. Especially Blight. Everything about her had screamed weakness. The way she had screamed as the peacekeepers dragged her to the reaping stage in District 7, her training score of 2, her interview. But now I know that she had been putting her unsurpassed acting ability to work every time. We all figured it out when her district partner had found her and had teased her mercilessly. She had brained him with her hand-made wooden axe, a result of hours of meticulous carving with her small pocket-knife.
I also know that her family will be targeted. She scammed everyone, and I can tell Snow is angry. I can't feel bad for her, she'll kind of deserve it. But I also have some sympathy for her, because she killed eight people, including five careers. She'll have nightmares for the rest of her life.
And my tribute from this year? Murphy lurks in the corners of my head, constantly asking me why I didn't bring him home alive in my nightmares. I don't know why, maybe because Johanna Mason's a axe-wielding psychopathic bitch? I certainly tried hard enough to help him. I tried hard enough, right?