This story was inspired by Snow princess by DreamTillDawn on on Archive Of Our Own and Snow Princess by EveryDream on Fanfiction. This story will start off similarly but go in a different direction quickly. Make sure you read her story too, It's amazing!

I don't own The Hunger Games.

Please let me know if you find any errors

This will eventually become Katniss x Finnick, Not overbearingly. The romance will mostly take a back burner to the story.

Peeta will also appear later in the story. I'm just tired of all Katniss x Finnick stories revolving around mutual loss of Annie and Peeta or because they need 'escape'.

This is my first attempt at writing and i'd be very pleased for feedback and reviews!

Summery: Katniss is snows granddaughter and is prompted to participate in planning the games each year. As she gets older she notices many things about her grandfather and his secrets that she doesn't agree with.

She makes her first kill at five. She doesn't know what she's doing - not really. She had just had her fifth birthday last week, the day before the games had started, and her grandfather had been so busy he hadn't the time to make for her.

He came to her today, interrupted her reading lesson to pull her aside to a long dark room where the large screens cover one wall and bask the glorified hallway in the little bit of light they provide. She's never been here before. It's cold.

People run through the screens yelling to each other, at each other. Grandfather calls them tributes. Monsters chasing them. Grandfather calls them mutts, made for the audience's entertainment.

They look small on the screen but so do all the people running around so she knows that they must be much larger in person. They look like walking fish with scales and sharp edges. She knows they must be rather pretty in the sun when its rays beat down, enhancing them. Enhancing is a new word that she learned this morning, her reading instructor tells her it's when the inner beauty of something is shown more clearly, a silver spoon after being polished, a star when all the lights go out at night, a rose when it's been dusted in mist.

The mutt jumps through the air landing heavy on a tribute, cutting his neck open and nearly taking his head off when he moves away. She watches on with awed focus nearly as strong as the mutt's teeth. Her grandfather too watches on, she can feel his prideful gaze upon her, clearly pleased as he pats down her unruly hair.

She saves her first life at five. She doesn't know what she's doing - still. Her grandfather shows her all the remaining people, tributes she remembers. Twelve of them to be exact, seven boys and five girls. He tells her she can pick her very favorite one.

There's a boy who grabs her attention immediately, his hair is as black as hers and he has grey eyes. She has grey eyes. She's never seen anyone else with grey eyes and for a moment it scares her. No one in the capitol has grey eyes, she knows this. The few people grandfather have allowed to meet her have told her so. This boy, with the black hair and the grey eyes like hers, is who she is going to choose.

Katniss watches him. He's clumsy and he's eating a dead fish that she doesn't think he's cooked. It's only after a few more moments when the shock of black and grey passes that she sees the other boy, younger but bigger. He's pretty. Her reading instructor would tell her that pretty isn't a word that she should use to describe a boy, and always trying to appease her she would then call him dazzling or striking, but in her mind she knows that pretty is the most fitting.

His hair is the color of rust, his eyes are the color of Caesars hair this year, bright and green. His skin has been enhanced by the sun. He's beautiful and deadly. She watches him make a trap out of a net and then cover it over with leaves and brush, when another tribute finds herself in it he hurls a knife into her chest. It's awkward.

Her history instructor who teaches her of the dark days that have long passed once showed her a video of a man who threw weapons in a similar fashion, not knifes but large spears that he called tridents. She prefers her history instructor to her reading one. The old man allows her to ask the questions she wants to ask and learn the things she wants to learn. He also shows her old fairy tell books that hold her mind hostage for days.

The boy deserves a better weapon with a smile so pretty.

"Him." She points her grandfather's attention to the boy who has just finished retrieving his knife from the body of the dead girl.

Her grandfather is disappointed she can tell. "He is your favorite of the year.. None of the more unique ones have caught your eye?"

The colors grey and black pass through her mind so quickly she almost doubts herself. No, she frowns. She wonders, does her grandfather not see him as she does? He looks like a prince to her, one of the ones from her fairy tells. She shakes her head at her grandfather, "He needs a trident, then he will be a victor." a prince.

She knows she's caught his attention, his eyes widen and he turns to the screen. She vaguely wanders if he noticed her new word, trident. "I believe you're right, what a wonderful idea."

She returns to her lessons then. Hours later when she's finished with her schooling she'll creep back to the hallway room with the screens and watch as the boy from four receives her gift.

He kills with a vengeance, taking out everyone who gets in his way as well as the ones who don't. The boy from eleven, the boy from ten, both from eight, the girls from five and three all four from one and two. She knows he killed the girl from eleven in the net and the girl from twelve in the bloodbath. Soon only two are left, he and the boy from twelve who looks like her.

Twelve sidesteps a trap hidden on the ground and raises a bow she can tell he's never used before. His movements are unfamiliar and sloppy but he's so quite that the prince from four hasn't noticed him only a few feet away. She knows he will win, he's so close that even without proper use of the bow there's no way he could miss. She can't breathe.

She saw her grandfather touching the screens before, making it rain, pulling up pictures of the tributes, dropping some food down to a small group of them. Her hand reaches out and nudged at the trap covered up on the ground. Pushing and pulling it under the boy from twelve as fast as her shaking hands will allow.

She's not sure if she's allowed to be doing this or not and doesn't want her grandfather to find out and scold her. She understands that what she's doing will kill the boy from twelve. After meeting her grandfather earlier she had run back to her lessons and asked her history instructor, Ramon, what it all had meant.

The trap releases around the boy, not killing him but leaving him trapped with a metal shard protruding from his stomach. The boy from four spins and hurls the trident through his heart. A cannon sounds. She knows that it's because of her actions that a boy with black hair and dead grey eyes will have a family cry for him tonight. Much better than a knife, she thinks.

Grandfather asks if she would like to meet her new victor.

It catches her off guard. Thinking back she can only remembers ever meeting a handful of people, less than thirty. Five instructors, her avox Dolly, Caesar, her grandfather, and a handful of people that she was introduced to in passing by her grandfather. She's thrilled.

The dress she gets put in is grey and short, it poofs out at her waist and only covers one of her shoulders. The stylist had told her it was from the dark days as he'd tied the ribbons up her legs, connected to her shoes. Her hair had been forced into pig tails high on her head, her bangs still covering most of her face.

The tributes have always been introduced by Caesar and she knows that this is as much her introduction to the world as it is his.

"The two of you will dance and then you will be free to roam." Her grandfather walks with her through the halls to a set of large doors that lead to the ball room, she comes here every week for dance lessons but never for the lavish parties.

She's greeted by dozens of unfamiliar faces. Hushed whispers fill the room and occasionally a bright light will blind her. The center of the room has been left open for her dance, but the people lining the walls and food tables still feel suffocating. She's left alone when her grandfather disappears into the crowd leaving her hand and her behind. She smiles, though the crowd probably can't tell.

He walks through the crowd, more beautiful than she remembers, smiling. His smile is fake. The same smile as all the men grandfather introduced to her, the same smile her instructors wear when they have had enough with her but don't want to cause any unnecessary problems for themselves. When he offers his hand she takes it anyway.

He bows and calls her princess, compliments her lovely castle, he doesn't know she saved his life just days ago. Katniss doesn't like being mocked.

The dance they share is awkward, she's too small and he's too large, her hand doesn't reach his shoulder which leaves her fumbling to hold both his hands, and his steps are too big. The whispers grow louder. The capitol citizens find this adorable. The whispers call her a delicate princess while they call him the fierce victor. His hands are gripping hers so hard it hurts.

She's had enough. When he takes his next step she doesn't follow, forcing him to come to a stop as the slow music moves on.

"Stay still." She feels powerful when Finnick doesn't argue or fight her.

Her hands get a hold of his arms and she pulls herself up until she can stand on the top of his shoes. Finnick takes her hands again, and though his shake, he's much gentler this time. He's scared. He would never have allowed this if he thought she would notice, after all she's still a child. This time when they move it's much slower, his steps aren't too large so that her feet fall off his and he puts her hand on his arm instead of his shoulder. When the dance ends he pecks her cheek. Thanks her and goes.

When Katniss goes to bed that night with her new pet, a mutt generously gifted to her from her grandfather for her grand performance, she thinks about living in the districts, of being reaped for the games. In another room, in another building, in the same city Finnick crawls into the bed of his first suitor, thinking about the loss of his innocence.

She dreams of a better home, and so does he.