LEGENDS ▹ the hunger games au

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𝐀𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐕𝐈𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐒

WITH the windows open, a bitter type of coldness filled their house. The trees were bare and the sky was a pale type of grey.

Winter had come to District 12, and it brought a threat along with it.

Freezing coal miners would soon make their way out of black cinder houses and trek through the Seam to reach the mines.

Children from both the town and the Seam would make the frigid journey to the schoolhouse.

On this side of District 12, past the ashes of what used to be the Hob, and about a half-mile walk from the town square, it seemed like another world entirely. A light snow fell over the Victor's Village, the picture of peace and calm.

But then the morning was startled with a scream. It was sharp, high-pitched but familiar.

Willow Mellark woke with a start, gasping and finding herself unable to move amidst the inescapable fallout, muscles clenched not from cold air but from fright. The fear wasn't foreign by any means, but that didn't make it good company. Her breathing was harsh in her ears and she curled up beneath her blankets, trying to find shelter against the terror.

Terror was instinctual, like some sort of bodily reaction that was just as natural as breathing.

Terror was inevitable. She had distinctly been made aware of that fact before she could remember.

Just down the hall, nightmares were a nightly occurrence; screams rippling from raw throats, hands clawing the air like fending off an attacker. Will remembered being confused when she was little. Confused as to why the nightmares were here, why they would never go away. It was her father that sat her down, tried to explain in a way that a five year old could understand.

She couldn't.

But she pretended she did when she saw the desperate look in his eye, the quiver in her mother's hands. She must have been good at pretending, or they must have simply been eager to believe it. In the end, she supposed she couldn't ever understand. Not really, not fully, not until she experienced it for herself.

Will's eyes squeezed shut and she pushed her nails into her palms, creating half-moons in soft uncalloused skin that threatened to break. It hurt but it distracted her just enough. Her brother always said her nails were like claws, and she briefly let herself admit he was right. She waited for the screaming to end.

But it stretched on longer than she was used to.

At least there weren't many around to hear it.

Their house was one of the three occupied in the Victor's Village; it seemed almost tragic that no other tributes had won to take up occupancy in the other nine since her parents' Games twenty-six years ago.

Anyone close enough to hear was close enough to the family to understand. Aside from Haymitch Abernathy who lived a few doors down, it was just her grandmother and aunt who were now well-accustomed with the screams of the Mellark family.

The girl of only sixteen caught her breath and waited for their sounds to cease, waited for the peace to pull over again like a rug that hid away so much of their secrets.

Then the rug was thrown forward, and the screaming finally stopped. Soon, another voice took its place - low, reassuring, gentle in a way that could only belong to that of her father. He was good at that. He knew her mother best, far better than she or her brother ever was allowed. After twenty-six years of pretending together, she supposed he had to.