This is an AU Hunger Games world. Suzanne Collins owns The Hunger Games. I only own my version of her characters, the premise, and what happens in this story. Any mentions of magic and anything else recognizably trade marked also don't belong to me.
Prologue
Scattered stars winked and blinked in a sable sky. The frigid air made every breath the dying crone took unbearable.
She wheezed in another pained breath, and rubbed her aching chest. Life and death were tricky things. No one really knew what happened at the very start, or at the very end. At least, that's what she had originally thought back in Life One.
Her ragged breaths echoed around the tiny dingy room.
The decrepit, crumbling abandoned apartment building brought her little relief from the raging elements. A bitter sweet smile tugged at her dry lopsided mouth as hunger gnawed on her bones. She felt the familiar feeling of wasting away. Her bones felt brittle and heavy. Bright spots had started encroaching against her vision yesterday, and it was only getting worse.
Sometimes she idly wondered how she managed to curse herself. Was it the magic bound in her soul looking for something that she continually failed to find? Was it a curse to teach her a lesson? Or did she just piss of a maniacal wizard with a sick sense of humor? In any case, she hated the Cycling.
Another shuddering cough overtook her, as her squinty brown eyes prickled with fat tears. She wiped away blood that splattered out of her mouth during another coughing fit against her almost skeletal forearm. There was no food in this abandoned relic of a place either.
She idly wondered, in her dimming vision, if she could have another shot at trying again. Or would she finally die for good this time? If not, would the next one start at the beginning? Would she take some poor person's fully grown body like back in Life Five, Seven, and Fourteen? Would she even be human again? She'd lived life as a sentient tree once. It had been wonderfully peaceful. Would she still have magic? All these questions and more swirled around her darkening mind.
Her last thought in this life was that living and dying again and again sucked.
0=0=0=0=0=0
Her first breaths in her new life came out as gasps as she bolted awake. Her tanned olive skin was sweat soaked, and felt slick and sticky even as the cold air embraced her from the cracks in the wall.
Dim light streamed through cracked panes of glass that caressed the outlines of two slumbering people across from her.
The burning in her new body fogged up her already groggy mind as she tried to grasp what this body could remember. Blearily, she got up from the threadbare bed as her body automatically trudged along to a tiny room off to the side.
She relieved herself on a tiny tin toilet and let out a startled gasp when it flushed. Her eyes widened as she finished up and rinsed her hands with ice water at a cracked bathroom sink. She stretched towards the rusty mirror and patted her face.
She made faces at herself and pinched her new face this way and that, "So this is the new me, huh?"
Clear grey eyes stared back at her as she tugged on a long strand of straight black hair. She looked vaguely Asian with a mix of Caucasian this time around.
She smiled and found that she had tiny dimples. Baring her teeth at her reflection, revealed straight teeth and healthy gums. At the sight of that, she closed her mouth and nodded, 'Good teeth this time.'
Looking under her moth eaten shirt dress, she found that this body was exceedingly young. Maybe 10 or 11 give or take. Malnourished, but otherwise more or less intact. She was happy to have all her limbs in this life.
The burning feeling inside of her seemed to be receding as her magic unbound itself from its previous shackles. Her mind searched around this body's brain for any information as she quietly snuck back into the other room.
The room felt chilly and she figured that it was probably winter here. It had been summer when she had last died. Shuffling back onto the cold lumpy mattress, she slid under a rough canvas blanket and let her mind process everything. From what this body could remember, she had hidden a bad fever away from her mother and little sister.
Her little sister's name was Primrose. Hmm...That rang a bell somewhere in the back of her mind, but she shushed it. She didn't recall too much right now, minus her skills and deaths from each past Life Cycle, so she dismissed it.
She searched her mind some more, and found a floodgate of information left around from its' last occupant. It was always lucky when that happened since, most of the time, her new reincarnated bodies tended to wipe themselves before she got into them. There were glitches like this one now and then though.
'Okay... My name is now Katniss Everdeen. I am somewhere in a place called Panem. There are 'Hunger Games' here. Games that kill people between the ages of twelve and eighteen at the start of every year, for some reason. The year is 2169 and I am eleven years old.
My home is District 12. We are starving. My father died three months ago and the money for his death has long since dried up. I ended up with a fatal fever when I tried to fish in a nearby lake as a desperate attempt for food. That Katniss died without catching any fish. We're getting frail with only mint tea and wild greens to sustain us now.
Mother won't do anything but lie huddled under the blankets on her bed, eyes unfocused and lost. No amount of pleading from either of us has worked on her.
I've had to act as both mother and father to Prim with mother broken. And I'm supposed to go and sell Prim's baby clothes today...' Katniss's thoughts trailed off as she slowly accepted her new lot in life. Information kept trickling into her mind like water from a sieve.
The other Katniss had done her best to act as a proper guardian for Prim. Otherwise the district Peacekeepers would have taken them away from their despondent mother, and would have placed them into the community home.
Katniss recalled the sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, and the hopelessness that curled their bony shoulders forward. She'd never let that happen to Prim, and this new version of Katniss silently vowed to never let anything bad happen to Prim either. She looked too much like her sweet little daughter Mabel from a previous life.
She tried to shake that thought away.
Sweet tiny Mabel who cried when her mother had cried before she even knew the reason.
Sweet little Prim, who brushed and plaited their mother's hair before they left for school. Prim, who still polished their father's shaving mirror each night because he'd hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would crush her like a bug.
Mabel and Prim's faces melded together, and her resolve cemented in her heart. She'd figure out a way to get food today or die trying. There was just no other way around it. May 8th was just too far away. They'd die if they waited. It wasn't like she could rely on their mother to provide for them.
The swell of resentment when recognition flared at the sight of this body's mother, stunned her when it had initially happened. The flood of information that happened afterwards, explained it, but the bubble of resentment in this body deflated when she recalled her past lives. Love like that, love that ripped you in tiny jagged pieces when your other half died, that she could keenly understand.
She couldn't let the exasperation of it all go, though. This body's mother should've been stronger. You had to be a special kind of strong to withstand losing your spouse, and Katniss's mother proved that she didn't have that kind of steel in her.
She had learned back in Life 3 that adaptation was the key to survival, so she would take on this body and life as her own, like she did every time this happened to her.
She took a deep breath and looked out past the broken panes of glass that clung onto their window frame and saw that it was still early in the morning. The Hob was open almost twenty-four hours a day though, so they would be the first stop to try and sell Prim's baby clothes. Skipping another day of school wouldn't kill them.
Neither girl had gone to school in the last two weeks while they had tried to sustain themselves on mint tea and meager wild greens. It wasn't like the Capitol to take interest in two Seam girls not showing up to school for weeks at at time anyways. Usually, it was because of teen pregnancy, but that was neither here nor there.
They only really cared to look if you didn't seem to have parents because then you were easier to reap. The community home always had the most tesserae. They made all the orphans there sign up for triple or sometimes quadruple the tesserae each because they never seemed to have enough at the community home. It wasn't like it was exactly a well funded place either.
Tesserae were offered to each child between the ages of twelve and eighteen once a year throughout Panem. A single tessera was worth one years supply of grain and oil for one person, collected on a monthly basis. They'd give you one for free in the poorer districts like in District 10, 11, and 12, but if you needed more grain and oil than they gave you, and most people did, you'd have to sign up for more. Each time you signed up for extra, your name would be added to the reaping balls for every tessera claimed that year. And it wasn't like it was a one shot thing either. It was insidious because it was cumulative.
Katniss shook off her dreary line of thinking before deftly braiding her hair. She quickly and quietly pulled out the small bundle that was hidden under her bed before slipping into her threadbare clothes and leather boots.
Her father's old hunting jacket dwarfed her small frame, but it brought her warmth that she sorely needed. She knew that she needed to find some sort of substantial nourishment if she wanted to use her magic and survive this hard new life.
Katniss trudged through the frost bitten ground as the early morning sun hid behind the mountains. Dark clouds loomed on the horizon coloring everything a bright grey. It would probably rain today.
Miners with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, broken nails, and sunken faces trekked towards their destination. They morosely marched on as their families waved goodbye from dirty dilapidated porches. This part of District 12 where she lived was nicknamed the Seam; the ghetto of this district for all intents and purposes.
Her new home was at the edge of the Seam and quite close to a scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from the woods, in fact enclosing all of District 12, was a high chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire loops. She recalled that it was supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that lived in the woods - packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears, etc. - that could threaten the district. However, since two or three hours of electricity in the evenings every other month was considered lucky, it was usually turned off.
She shook those thoughts away as she concentrated on what she was supposed to be doing.
The Hob was where they got everything that they couldn't get from the Merchant district. Which was quite a lot of things when you thought about what was banned for sale in this district. It operated in and around an abandoned warehouse that once held coal.
When the Capitol came up with a more efficient system that transported the coal directly from the mines to the trains, the Hob gradually took over the space. Being the least prestigious, poorest, and most ridiculed district in the country had its advantages. The Capitol largely ignored all the illegal activity, as long as their district produced their coal quotas.
It was frightening to enter the Hob without her father by her side, but people had respected him and liked her. Besides, they recognized her and accepted her as a fellow trader. She'd been hunting and trading along with her father since she was six, and had only recently stopped after his death.
She went from Hob merchant to Hob merchant, looks of pity colored their faces as they all said that they didn't need any baby clothes to use or sell. Katniss left the Hob hours later, frustration making her eyes water as she tried the Merchant market.
She knocked on the nicer Merchant's back doors first; the Butcher, the Grocer, and the Cobbler had known her dad and mother from before, and were always kind to her. When that hadn't worked, she dared go to the ones that weren't so favorable towards her. The Baker was nice, but his witch of a wife made her decide to try that place last.
Both the Apothecary and the Tailor shooed her away with as much discretion as they could when they saw her. She sometimes wondered if her maternal uncle, the Apothecary owner, ever recalled that he had a sister and nieces. She doubted that he ever lost sleep over the fact that they were starving.
Rain started spitting down from the darkening sky, making her already frustrating afternoon worse. She trudged towards the back of the bakery, the cold wind and icy sheets of rain making her shiver.
The smell of fresh baked bread overwhelmed Katniss and made her feel dizzy with the faint promise of sustenance. The ovens were in the back of the bakery, and a golden glow spilled out of the open kitchen door.
She stood stock still, mesmerized by the heat and the scrumptious scent until the rain ran its icy fingers down her back, and jolted her back to life. Before she could make it past an old chestnut tree, she stumbled over a gnarled root and gasped as Prim's formerly clean threadbare baby clothes dropped into a nearby mud puddle.
She stared at the sodden baby clothes before turning and contemplatively staring at the trash bins. All forms of stealing were forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. 'They wouldn't care about trash though, right?' Katniss hazarded a guess.
She decided that she'd just have to risk stealing trash. She'd eaten out of trash bins before in a previous Life, and it looked like it might have to be the case again. She lifted the lid to the baker's trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.
Suddenly a voice screamed at Katniss, jostling her out of her new despair.
She looked up and spotted the baker's squat furious wife, "MOVE ON! Do you want me to call the Peacekeepers, Seam brat!? I am so sick and tired of the likes of you and your ilk pawing through my God damn trash! Shoo! OUT!"
Her words were ugly and stung, but Katniss had no real defense, at least not yet. Without sustenance and without magic, she had no defense at all. As Katniss carefully replaced the lid and backed away, she noticed a boy with blond hair and brilliant blue eyes peer out from behind his mother's back.
Katniss recalled that they'd been going to school together since they were five. She knew that he was in her year, but she didn't quite remember his name. He stuck with the town kids, so it wasn't like she ever had a chance to get to know him better.
Everyone in District 12 knew that the baker's wife beat them though, it was one of the worst kept secrets around. His mother stormed back into the bakery, grumbling to herself. Katniss skulked behind the pen that held the bakery's pig and leaned against the far side of an old apple tree. The blond boy continued to watch her, an unreadable look stuck on his face.
Cold realization hit her hard. She'd have nothing to take home now. Her knees buckled and she slowly slid down the slick tree trunk onto to its damp roots. It was just all too much for her.
This new body was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Even with the little magic swirling in her, she could still feel the pangs of desperate hunger rolling inside. It was too reminiscent of the way that she had starved to death before.
'Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home', Katniss sullenly thought, as her heart felt like it would crack in two.
Tears gathered in her eyes, 'Or better yet, let me die again right here in the rain. God damn it.'
There was a clatter in the bakery, and she heard the woman scream again along with the sound of a blow. She scrubbed her tears away, and vaguely wondered what was going on.
Feet sloshed towards her through the mud and Katniss thought with dread, 'It's her. She's coming to drive me away with a rolling pin.'
She looked up mournfully, and found that it wasn't her. It was the boy. In his arms he carried two large loaves of bread, bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were scorched black.
His mother shrieked out of the kitchen doorway, "Peeta Mellark, feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! No one decent will buy burnt bread!"
He tore off small chunks from the burnt parts and tossed them into the trough, as the front bakery bell rang while his mother disappeared to help a customer.
'Peeta's a nice name', Katniss idly thought as she continued to stare at him. She noted that he was sort of cute, in her despair ridden haze.
He never glanced her way, but Katniss couldn't help but keep watching him. Because of the bread and because of the red welt that stood out on his cheekbone.
Katniss frowned, 'What had his mother hit him with this time?' She couldn't fathom it. Her parents had never hit them. Not like that. Never like that.
Peeta took one look back at the bakery, as if checking if the coast was clear, then with his attention back on the pig, threw a loaf of bread towards Katniss. The second quickly followed, and Peeta hurriedly sloshed back into the bakery. He closed the kitchen door tightly behind him with nary a glance back at her.
Katniss stared at the hot burnt loaves on her lap in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for the burnt parts. She glanced back up at the bakery with a small frown furrowing her brow, 'Did he mean for me to have them? He must have.'
Before anyone could witness what had happened, she gingerly got up, shoved the loaves up under her shirt, wrapped the hunting jacket tightly about her, and swiftly hurried away. She darted and snatched the sodden baby clothes out of the mud puddle on her way towards the Seam. The heat of the bread burnt her skin, but she clutched it tighter, clinging to life. She refused to die before she reached her twelfth birthday. She hated dying young.
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By the time she reached home, the loaves had cooled somewhat, but the insides were still warm. Katniss gathered her mother and Prim out of their tiny drafty bedroom and into the kitchen.
When she dropped the loaves onto the creaky kitchen table, Prim's hands darted over to tear off a chunk, but Katniss made her sit down at the kitchen table along with their mother. Katniss shook as she made them fresh mint tea and scraped off the black burnt bits before she sliced the bread.
They hadn't had real food in months. The sight of the bread seemed to stir something in her mother. She roused herself as they ate an entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good hearty bread, filled with nuts and raisins. The mint tea tasted so much better with food to go along with it.
Katniss put her clothes to dry by the fire, and crawled into bed. Her magic thrummed underneath her skin and she knew that she could make a real change with their lives as long as she could help them all survive. She just had to think of some way.
It was so much harder to conjure something from nothing when she had no energy. Permanently transfiguring one thing into something else was a craft she'd always been good at. Plus it only took a little energy. Or multiplying stuff. She pondered about what she could do, magic wise, to alleviate their possible demises via starvation as she fell into a dreamless sleep.
It didn't occur to her until the next morning that Peeta might have burnt the bread on purpose. As she took a quick icy shower she wondered, 'Could he have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to me?'
She shook that thought off as she went about her morning ritual before school, 'It must have been an accident. Why else would he have done it? He doesn't even really know me. I'm just some random classmate to him... Right? Still, just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely resulted in another beating if he was discovered. So, why would he do it?'
She finished helping Prim braid her hair before her mother did her hair for once. It seemed as though the life giving bread had brought their mother back into focus. She sliced their last loaf of bread up for breakfast and ate quietly with them while Katniss kept thinking about Peeta and his life saving actions.
The two sisters headed off to school. On their way there, Katniss took in a deep breath and felt as though spring had come overnight. The air felt warm and tasted sweet. The clouds seemed fluffy instead of ominous.
She just felt a whole lot better. Much less at the brink of death. Food really did wonders. That and human kindness. Peeta didn't know it, but he had permanently etched a place for himself on her heart.
At school, she passed by Peeta in the hallway, and noted that his cheek had swollen up and his eye had blackened. He was with his friends at the time and didn't acknowledge her in any way. But as she collected Prim and started for home that afternoon, Katniss found him staring at her from across the school yard.
Their eyes met, and Katniss couldn't stop the beaming smile that blossomed onto her face. He stared at her for only a second before he flushed and turned his head away, a sheepish grin tugging at his lips. Her face felt hot as she dropped her gaze, embarrassed, and that's when she saw it.
The first dandelion of the year. Hope. She plucked it carefully and hurried home.
A bell went off in Katniss's head. She recalled the hours spent in the woods with her father, and instantly knew how they were going to survive.
Katniss decided she'd do her idea first before she'd figure out someway to thank Peeta. Just like in her last lives, she hated feeling like she owed someone something. That and the prevalent thought that he was cute, still persisted in her mind, even as she tried to squash that thought down.