A/N: Wow, this was originally going to be centered around Fiyero, but that changed majorly! Oh, well, have a look at Jericho's most vivid Dark Days memory. If you guys like Fiyero enough I'll do another chapter specifically for him. And even if you don't like him maybe I will anyways. XP

JERICHO'S POV

It's a normal day. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. Everything is bright, just as always in the beautiful Capitol. Right?

I'm 14, Walt is a senior in high school at 18. It's such a nice day, and everything is going just fine.

I'm in the library, waiting. I'm struggling in algebra, badly struggling, so bad my teacher set me up with a tutor. I'm just waiting to see who it could be, and promise to try to be friends with them. I'm just so anxious, though...

The worst part is that he's an upperclassman! Two years older than me at 16.

I put my head down and wait until I hear someone sitting across from me. I look up hesitantly at the guy.

He has pleasant greenish-hazel eyes, and the only part of his dirty blonde hair that's dyed is the tips of his bangs, bright red. He wears a red feather behind his ear and smiles at me.

"Are you Jericho?" He asks quietly, an inviting smile on his face.

"Mmhm."

"It's nice to meet you. My name is Fiyero Ripert. I'm here to help you."

"Mmhm." I sound like an idiot.

"So, let's get right into this algebra, eh?" He opens up his textbook. "Tell me where you're losing it."

"Actually..." I take a deep breath, instinctively chewing on my fingernails. "Here." I point to the step in my notes I don't understand.

"Alright, then we'll start there!" He smiles warmly at me and I feel a bit more at home. We abandon the math after one measly problem and get to talking.

He listens to everything I say and smiles brightly like it's really interesting. I tell him about Walt, he tells me that he's got a puppy at home, which interests me greatly.

In fact, I think… I think I hit it off with Fiyero, and it's shocking!

"…Well, we should probably get back to this math now," he says, after telling me a story about his puppy eating shoes.

I laugh at his story, then nod. I don't want to go back to algebra after such a fun conversation.

And, it turns out that I don't have to.

Because, just then, something odd happens. Something that's never happened before.

"Attention staff and students-" the voice over the speaker says. It's not our usual secretary, which is especially odd. Something's up.

I look up, swallowing hard. Walt is probably home by now...

"The Districts are officially in a state of rebellion. The Capitol is officially at risk of being attacked."

The library goes silent, my eyes get wide.

An alarm goes off in the back of my head, I have to find my brother!

I pack up my stuff and sling my backpack over my shoulder.

"The Capitol is officially under lockdown. Please remain calm and stay indoors until we receive further notice. I repeat-"

I don't stop to listen, I take off running. Running to get home.

As I run through the halls of the school, the lights start to go out and I hear footsteps behind me.

"Jericho!"

It's my tutor!

I don't stop running, I keep going, running out the doors. The footsteps don't slow down behind me, "Jericho!"

I run down the streets as all the lights shut off with loud clicks, but I don't stop running.

Fiyero catches up with me and grabs my backpack, "Jericho, what are you doing!?"

I push him, panting as I run, "Can't... Stop... Now..." I pant. The streets are so quiet our doorsteps pound.

Suddenly, loud and alarming sirens start to wail along with the loud female voice announcing, but I don't stop.

I see Peacekeepers, their alarmed postures stiff, and looking around, alarmed. They snap towards us when they hear the footsteps, and with loud cracks, shoot at us as we run past.

I don't get hit but the footsteps become a lot less even and imitate limping behind me. When we reach the door, I turn around and lock eyes with my tutor as I pound on the door.

After a delay, Walt opens the door and I look over at my tutor.

Suddenly, I notice that Fiyero's leg is bleeding.

"I-I should go home-" he says quietly, but Walt interrupts him, "Too late for that now!"

My brother grabs Fiyero by the shoulders and pulls him inside along with me.

"Get downstairs," Walt growls, going to the kitchen, "I'll be right there."

I nod and help Fiyero down the steps, him swearing quietly as we descend. Once we get down the steps. I set him down on a couch as Walt comes running down the steps, closing the door behind him.

"What the hell were you thinking, Jericho!? You should've stayed at school."

Walt gets to work on Fiyero's wound with shaking hands, and I'm driven to tears.

"I'm sorry, Walt! I had to find you!"

"Don't yell at him," Fiyero says, groaning as Walt cleans the wound, "It…It's the last thing he needs."

"Fine." Walt finishes wrapping up Fiyero's leg and then sits down, sighing. "All we can do is wait. I doubt the Districts have the capability to bomb us-"

"Thirteen might," Fiyero mutters.

Walt ignores it, "It'll just be a lot of gunfire."

We turn on the TV and sit in silence, as the gunfire becomes audible in the world above us. A grim reporter tells us to keep our doors locked and stay low, and whatever we do, don't go outside or else we will be shot.

Suddenly, everything flickers off. Walt lights a couple of candles and hands them to us, and after that, nobody speaks.

We sit in absolute silence until we hear pounding on our door. At the first loud boom, I yelp and dive into Walt's arms, crying scared tears. After that, we hear a loud boom.

Tears fall out of my eyes, I curl up in Walt's arms, and Walt moves to stands over the injured Fiyero, too.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

The door bursts open and heavy footsteps come downstairs. We see a group of rebels, dressed in black with giant guns in their hands.

Leading the pack is a giant guy who looks Walt's age with flaming hair and brown eyes. He's the first to aim at us, the two behind him following.

Walt pushes me behind him, growling.

"Walt, no!" I run back to him, sobbing, but he shoves me back so far I fall over.

"This isn't a game, Jericho," he growls, turning back to the rebels, with their guns pointed on us.

"Take me," Walt growls quietly, "Shoot me, take me back, do whatever you want. But for a God's sake, don't shoot the children!"

The tension is so thick you could cut it with a string. I sob quietly but know better than to try and be a hero now.

"We've got nothing!" Walt says over my crying. Fiyero rubs my back gently, trying to calm me down.

The gun shakes in the giant guy's hands. The kid beside him has black hair and green eyes, and he looks close to my age, shaking even more.

The gun stays on Walt for a long time before the tallest of the three puts it down.

"We can't do this," he says quietly. As soon as the guns are lowered, I run to Walt, and he hugs me tightly, letting me sob to my heart's content.

"We have to kill them!" One of them says.

"Byron... Dad'll kill us if we don't!" the smallest one says.

"I'll hear none of it! We're not going home, Zack. We're never going home. Never going back to that. Not if I can help it."

I cry into Walt's stomach quietly.

"Look at him, David. They're all kids, just like we are. Kids shouldn't have to kill other kids."

"Ron..."

"You want to shoot 'em!? Look at them!"

"If we don't kill these Capitolites, we'll be tried for treason when we go home!"

"Not necessarily..." He bites his lip, "We just have to run away and stay away."

I breathe heavily into Walt's arms, scared beyond belief, waiting to see what happens to us...

After some quiet talk we can't hear, the three rebels turn to us, and they drop their weapons.

"Please, let us explain ourselves."

~.~.

We sit, hide the guns in the dark, and light three more candles to clearly see the rebels' faces. The oldest is by far the bloodiest of the three, and all of them look starving.

The oldest is the first to speak, looking between Fiyero, Walt, and me. "My name is Byron, and this is my younger brother Zack and our friend David. We're from District 2, and the second the Districts declared war… Even before that… They drafted us."

"We can't kill like this," David says quietly, picking at a scab on his arm. "All three of us come from abusive homes, you see, so we don't want to go back home. We thought this would be the best for us."

"We can't go back, especially not now," Zack says quietly, burrowing his face in his brother's coat, "We'll be tried for treason and shot!" He cries quiet tears into his brother's side.

"Sh..." Byron rubs his brother's back. There appears to be more similarities between us than we thought.

"I pledge my allegiance to peace," Byron says, over his brother's weak sobs, "Nothing less than peace! We're all people, people with lives, people with a purpose… I pledge my alliance to nothing less than peace!" Byron holds up his candle high.

"Peace," David echoes, doing the same.

"Nothing less than peace," says Fiyero quietly, raising his and cringing at his leg.

I think about it, and all I want is peace. This is the first battle of many, and it's only going to get scarier from here. I sniffle and echo the "peace," some wax dripping on my wrist as I hold my candle up.

"Peace for all of us." Walt follows the example. There's a brief pause before he says, "I think I can help you." He lets me go and I curl up next to Fiyero.

"I'll be back. I think I have a kit of dyes up in my room."

~.~.

"What's your name?" Walt asks.

"Byron Linder."

"Wrong. You'll have to change it." He turns to the others, "You too."

"Oh..."

"What are you going to do, Ron?"

"Ron. Ron..." He thinks. "I'll keep the nickname. Geronimo."

"That's good." Walt gets to his makeshift dying station as he asks, "What about you?"

"Mark," says the younger brother, "I'll be Mark!"

"And for last names?" Byron asks. Er, uh, Geronimo, I guess.

"I know someone that could take you in," Fiyero says, "Sedwick."

"I don't need that," David says, "I can go on my own, open a tattoo place, make a living for myself. I'll be Flynn. Adam Flynn."

"Are you sure?" Geronimo looks over, concerned, where Walt is putting some color I can't see in the dark into his hair.

"Positive," David, or Adam, says quietly, tracing some patterns I can't make out on his arm.

"I sure hope you like green..." Walt says quietly, wrapping Geronimo's head in a dye-stained towel, "And I hope you can fake a Capitol accent."

"That can't be too hard, can it?" Geronimo asks.

"Of course not!" Mark says, impersonating the Capitol accent. Maybe we'll be friends.

"Mark, you next," Walt says, getting some bleach out from his kit.

"Who? Oh, right, me!" Mark laughs, sitting and letting Walt dye his hair.

"All I can do for now is bleach it and maybe add some of this yellow..." He gets to work and I sit with Fiyero and watch, his fingers stroking my back comfortably.

"Take the suit," Walt says to Geronimo, pointing to one he brought down.

"Are you sure?"

"If you ever want to blend in, you'll need it. It used to be mine, but I was going to stick with the blue and gray anyways."

"If you're positive…" Geronimo goes off to change.

After bleaching Mark's hair and dying Adam's dark blackish navy, Walt lends each of them a pair of his old clothes. Soon, we all sit together in a circle around the couch, where Fiyero rubs my back gently. Walt passes out some food for all of us, and we split it evenly.

"There. Now all they'll see us and some, uh, Capitol street-rats… That we decided to take in and make-over."

"Thank you so much, kind strangers!" Mark says. His eyes are wide at the food and the prospect of leaving his household.

"We don't know your names..." Geronimo says, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, yeah, you don't. I'm Walt. That's Jericho, and his, uh-" Walt pauses, Fiyero and I speak up at the same time.

"His tutor-"

"My friend, Fiyero."

The three rebels who are actually Capitolites now nod. "Right."

"How can we thank you!?" Mark says, with wide eyes, "How can we repay you!? How!?"

"Uh..." Walt mutters, confused.

"Relax," Geronimo says quietly, putting a hand on Mark's shoulder gently.

"We'll find a way, someday."