Summary: The 68th annual Hunger Games are about to begin. Dean Winchester has lived in District 5 his whole life, good at keeping his head down and staying out of too much trouble. He just wants to get through the reaping without losing anyone close to him—it's an easy enough wish when he only cares about his brother and his best friend. When this year's Games throw him into the national spotlight, though, everything is going to change. He's got one ally in the arena, two (or three? He's still not sure about Gabriel) in the Capitol, and quite a few in the Districts. Unfortunately, there's also twenty-two kids in the arena that want to kill him and the leader of an entire country out for his blood. Will Dean be able to survive the Games as his past and present collide? Will he be able to fool the whole country of Haven into believing that he's in love with his best friend? He's walking a tightrope that he's bound to fall off of, and nobody's below to catch him.

Slowburn Destiel. Like, REALLY slowburn. Lots of violence (I mean, this is the Hunger Games and Supernatural combined).

Updates are every Monday, Eastern Time.

Prologue:

Mary Winchester and John Winchester are both Victors.

Mary won her game three years before John, when she was just fifteen. Most people expected her to die almost immediately—attractive blonde females are often underestimated, it would seem—so most of the other tributes put her out of their minds as they traversed the woodland forest arena that had been designed for them. They hadn't been expecting her survival skills to be so advanced. Sure, she'd been an unofficial Career—she's from District 5, but she's still been training for the Games in case her name was ever called—but there are so many Careers fighting against her that are stronger, bigger, and most importantly, men. Besides, Careers die in the Games as well and really, nobody even knew she'd been training.

No, she was written off, and so Mary went off into the woods while everyone else squabbled over their weapons and already-prepared food. She knew how to make traps for wildlife and how to skin rabbits with crude rocks, so food wasn't an issue for her. Protecting herself was, again, simple, but less so than food had been.

The thing that had really set her apart from the rest, and was all the more impressive because of the stereotypes about blonde women, was the way she outsmarted everyone in the Games. It didn't take her long to find poisonous berries called nightlock, and after that she scattered them just enough around the campgrounds of all the other alliances that had formed.

It hadn't even been hard.

Apart from a few monsters and staged fights that she knew the Gamemakers had set up, she got away scot-free, and her reputation soared as someone you'll never be able to outsmart.

(Rumors that she wasn't a natural blonde started as well, mostly by men, to excuse how she was able to outsmart everyone else.)

John Winchester was three years after that, from the same district, when he was eighteen. Terrible luck to be picked on the last year you would have been in the pool, everyone said, but no one really cared. It happens all the time. Better than a twelve-year-old's name picked out of the bowl.

In the other two Games, people have tried to imitate Mary's style using fancy tricks such as putting the berries in their allies' food, but people are so paranoid about their food it rarely works. Well, it sort of works, but not in the way the tributes had been hoping; they'd all been so paranoid about their food that some tributes starved themselves to death.

John didn't even bother with the 'outsmarting' technique. He's smart, sure, but in an 'average' way, although that didn't stop him from playing to his strengths. He was hardly an unofficial Career, but years of repairing the hydroelectric dam made John strong.

John got three kills in the bloodbath as well as a knife, but someone drove a spear into his shoulder and he had to retreat into the woods to regroup. He might not even have won had a group of Careers not chased after him. They found him after three days when he'd patched up his shoulder and built a trap for them—he did learn something from the pretty Victor that's his age, after all—and slit all their throats.

After that was one District 12 female that killed herself when she saw John coming. She was the only one left. She'd been smart like him. Smarter, probably. She'd known when it was time to give up.

It was a good thing John waited as long as he did in the forest. If he hadn't, the Careers might not have killed the other tributes for him. Lucky for him, they took out all the other competition before practically delivering themselves to him on silver platters. The Game hardly lasted a week.

John and Mary met at a Victor party in the Capitol. They'd seen each other around District 5, for sure, and John's nearly positive that they went to the same high school, but they'd never really talked.

Mary found John sitting slumped in his chair, attempting to drown himself in alcohol. She'd not judged him. She'd sat right down next to him, two murderers side by side with no intent to kill the other, and they said nothing to each other all night.

For three Victor parties that continued. John drank and Mary sat.

The day after the fourth, John saw Mary wandering around the district with nothing to do, just like him. They'd seen the other and noticed the restlessness that comes with no work to do in both of them (it was like looking into a mirror). Noticed the bottle in John's hand and the emptiness in Mary's eyes, and then something had happened and Mary had told John to quit drowning his sorrows, that he was alive and wasn't that good enough?

Then there was another Games, and John and Mary were selected to mentor the tributes together, which was unusual only because non-Career districts rarely have two Victors of opposite sexes be eligible for mentoring at the same time.

The tributes died.

Horribly.

The boy's head was bashed in during the bloodbath. The girl was hunted by two Careers for three days before they tired of the game of cat-and-mouse and chased her into a tree. She starved to death, unwilling to take her chances on the ground.

Mary joined John in drinking that night, and something inside them both broke, but it broke together.

They dated—if 'dated' is a good enough word for it—for four years before John asked her to marry him and the next morning they woke up to cameras flashing outside their shared house. He hadn't wanted to think very hard about how the news had already come out when it had only been decided that night at around 3 in the morning, but Mary wanted to think about it. A lot.

Dean Winchester is born on January 24. He's a beautiful baby boy, very outspoken, very cuddly, and Mary loves to ruffle up his blond curls.

(She also loves to make passive-aggressive remarks about the Capitol inside the 'safety' of their childhood home, despite John's warnings about ears always listening, because how else would the reporters have found out about the engagement?)

Samuel Winchester is born on May 2, four years after his big brother. He's beautiful too, but his hair is darker and he's much quieter than Dean. Dean falls in love with him immediately and Mary's ecstatic about their relationship.

On November 2, when Sam is exactly six months old, Mary goes missing.

She's found two days later hanging from a rope in the hydroelectric dam. President Naomi declares it a suicide.

John knows it's bullshit (or maybe he just hopes).