Patchwork

by Fanfic Allergy

A series of short unrelated ficlets based on a theme set with 50 prompts. In this is everything from side stories to our major fics, to soulmates, to alternate retellings, to character studies. Each chapter is complete and separate. The chapter listing will tell you which characters are featured. Parings are indicated by an "and" symbol.

47. End of the Beginning (Mr Everdeen)

Disclaimer: The Hunger Games Trilogy is property of Suzanne Collins. This is a parody fanwork by fans for fans. No money was made off of the creation of this fanwork.

The End of the Beginning
by FanficAllergy & RoseFyre

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Theme: 40: Sick
Words: 758
Summary: It started with a cough. How Mr. Everdeen became another victim of the Capitol and Katniss became the woman we know in Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged.

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"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
― Winston Churchill

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It started with a cough.

Katniss was ten. Her father was teaching her how to lead the prey when he was overcome with a coughing fit. The sudden hacking noise startled both the turkey and his daughter.

The bird leapt into the air, desperate to get away. Just as desperate, Katniss fired her arrow. She hit the bird and it fell from the sky like a stone. Katniss let out an excited whoop, her concern for her father overshadowed by elation at her kill. She barely noticed him wiping away pink-tinged foam from the corners of his mouth. She definitely didn't notice the red and black flecked phlegm he spat into the bushes.

When she finally remembered to ask him about it, he brushed her concerns away, said it was just a tickle in his throat. That it was nothing.

It was a lie.

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The cough came and went with no apparent rhyme or reason. There was no pattern. No obvious culprit.

When it did appear, the cough was hacking, unproductive, and each time her father brushed it off with, "Something went down the wrong tube," or "I've got a tickle in my throat."

Katniss was too young, too innocent, to see the lies for what they were. And she was too unobservant to note her mother's frowns of concern each time another coughing fit hit.

At least for now.

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The first time her father was too sick to work was just after Aven was born.

A steady cough from when the weather first turned cold developed into full-bore pneumonia after a long day's hunting.

Her mother was desperate, filling the house with smoke from sage and mullein, plying her father with tinctures of laurel, rosemary, and lavender, feeding him cough syrup of wild cherry bark and honey until he complained of the warring flavors. She used every trick in her healer's arsenal to get him better.

And it worked.

Sort of.

Her father mostly recovered after a week of bedrest, but the cough never really went away. It'd creep up on him while he slept or after a long walk. Hunting became much more hit and miss. Katniss's unerring aim was an unusual side effect of her father's illness.

Worse, Katniss no longer believed the weak excuses he'd offer. Something was wrong, and she had a growing suspicion she knew what it was.

Black lung was common in the Seam. So common even children as young as six or seven could identify the symptoms. Hacking cough bringing up black mucus. Wheezing rattles emanating from the afflicted's chest. The inability to sleep while lying down. Those were the later stages. The early stages mimicked a cold or allergies, but unlike a cold, the person afflicted didn't get better over time, but worse.

It was a death sentence and everyone knew it.

Every family in the Seam lost someone to black lung. It was now the Everdeens' turn.

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Her father's illness progressed steadily over the years, resurging earlier each winter and forcing him out of work for longer, and longer, until finally in the autumn of her fifteenth year, it reached the point of no return.

The mine foreman, focused on meeting Capitol quotas, fired her father after he'd missed one too many days of work. Sick and knowing he wouldn't get better, her father tried to lay in enough stores to see the family through winter. There was a desperate frenzy to his work. He took both Katniss and Prim out with him, despite the latter never showing any interest in hunting or trapping. It was as if he knew this would be the only chance he had to pass on the knowledge of generations of Everdeens to the current one.

Every day they hunted, trapped, and gathered. Every day.

It was too much. His body failed.

In the last week of November, her father collapsed, unable to breathe.

As before, her mother worked frantically, despairingly to save him, but Katniss knew it was too late. He had the dead man's rattle, a gurgling shaking in his chest with each and every breath. His lungs were so full of fluid that his lips tinged blue from the lack of oxygen.

The end was in sight, and Katniss had no idea what would happen when it arrived.

She had no idea how her family would survive.

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AN:
Written: 7/7/18
Revised: 7/19/18

The Patchwork prompt was sick, and, well, it just worked for Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged. So slight prequel, here you go!

We hinted at what happened with Katniss's father, but we wanted to show it too. Because this is something that is still affecting coal miners today, including in the US. This is why we need regulations and healthcare. And renewable energy. Okay, political statement over.

You can get more information about our original writing here:

Website: RoseLarkPublishing

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