A/N: This is the second story in my Story of the Games series, the first being about Finnick's Games. You don't have to read that one, but I'd recommend it. It's short! This story will be told from two POVs, that of Finnick Odair, and that of my OC Scarlett Delannoy. This first chapter is from Scarlett's POV. Hope you enjoy it!

-C

It was a particularly warm morning in District Seven on reaping day. I rolled out of bed, which I shared with my four-year-old niece, and went outside to where my father usually chopped wood. He wasn't chopping today, though. He was sleeping in, hoping in silence that I wouldn't be drawn. My entire nine-person family was inside the house, hoping I wasn't going to be drawn.

I hadn't had to take tesserae at first. That started when I was fourteen after my sister Serena became too old to be drawn, and she hadn't had to take it until Hana married. Then father was supporting not only his six children, but also Hana's husband (who did try to help, but it was hard to make good money logging), and my little niece, Alyson. Even though I'd only been taking tesserae three years, my name would be in the drawing twenty-nine times.

It didn't mean I would be drawn. True, few families were half as large as mine, and not all of the large ones had to take the tesserae. Still, there were enough girls in that drawing that I wouldn't necessarily be drawn.

The oldest of my younger brothers, Brendanus, came outside to join me. He was eleven, and wouldn't be up for the reaping until the next set of Games. He sat down beside me, looking up at the sky.

"It's going to rain today," he said casually.

It was our little joke. It rained nearly every day in District Seven.

"Yeah," I muttered. "I hope Trish remembers her coat this year."

My best friend, Trish, always got herself made up nicely for the reaping, knowing she had nearly as much tesserae entries as I did, but the year before we'd had an outright downpour during the reaping, when Jack and Ellie were drawn.

They were both dead on the first day of the Games.

"She will," he said, "if you go remind her."

I smiled at him slightly. He was right, of course; Trish had the memory of a squirrel. I kissed him on the forehead, told him to tell Hana where I'd gone, and went out toward Trish's house, which was well out of town. My family wasn't in town, either, as my father did splitting of wood and not some specialized career, but we had inherited a place closer to town from my mother's side, which was a bit richer than Trish's.

Trish was also from a family of six, although she was the oldest. Trish, Terance, Brent, Adde, Amie, and Lizzy had two bedrooms between them. For the boys, this wasn't so bad, but for the girls, it wasn't the greatest of arrangements, and it was particularly bad for Trish, who was the only one of her siblings, like me, old enough for the Games, so there was quite a gap between her and her younger sisters, the oldest of who was seven.

I knocked on the door to be greeted by their mother, who was up early, as always.

She was a logistical manager at the sawmills, where they did the big cutting. My father did finer chopping and cutting, the kind a machine couldn't achieve, for artisan woodwork. Elin, Trish's mother, had to be up with the sun for her work, and I suppose the habit carried over into reaping days, much like harvest celebrations, the new year, and probably even sick days.

My father was often up with the sun, too, but he didn't like getting out of bed on reaping days, or at least, he hadn't felt right about it since I started going on for the reaping.

My mother died giving birth to Ripley, the youngest, when I was ten years old. My father was a stoic sort of man, always doing what had to be done, going about his work, never wallowing in his pain. We all knew, though, that he missed her very much. I was the only child who had gotten her red hair, which I prized, but it was a constant reminder to my father of her. Sometimes he would look at me and it was as though he was looking past me, remembering her, no doubt.

When my sisters went to the reaping, it was just another duty my father endured, and he went about it with his usual stoic face with an added required smile, because the reaping was supposed to be something we celebrated, although no one really did. But when I turned twelve and went up for my first reaping, much to our surprise, we found my father lying in bed that morning when we woke up, staring at the ceiling, a hollow, vacant look in his eyes and his mouth soundlessly forming a word we could all tell was our mother's name. Hana and Serena tried getting him out of bed, but we only managed to get him to acknowledge our presence when I curled up on the bed beside him, asking him for breakfast.

I could have made breakfast myself. I was twelve, not a baby, but it did the trick. The fact that I was asking him for something like I had done as a child seemed to rouse him from whatever spell he was under and he put on his stoic face, kissed my forehead, and set out to take care of all of us.

My father never says he loves me, never tells me I'm pretty, never really shows much of emotion, but that day when my sister and I were no called, my father hugged me so tightly I thought he might snap me in half.

That day seemed to repeat itself in one way or another every reaping after, and I knew my father would not get out of bed until I came back from Trish's, so I had to be quick.

"Hello, Elin," I said with a smile. "Is Trish in?"

"Of course," Elin replied. She opened the door at let me in.

The fact that Elin didn't return my smile had nothing to do with the reaping. She didn't like me very much. She thought I was too headstrong, too opinionated, and too dangerous. Her joke was that I ought to be chosen for the Games because eventually my tongue would get me killed, anyway.

I never thought the joke was very funny.

The house was smaller than mine, and I knew the floor plan by heart, making my way to Trish's room at the end of the hall. Trish was doing Lizzy's hair.

"Someday I'll get to wear a pretty dress and stand in line too," Lizzy said in her sweet little voice. To her, the reaping was a game. She still didn't understand what happened to the boys and girls who were chosen, and certainly hadn't been told why they never came back.

Trish looked up at me, fear in her eyes.

"Don't forget your coat," I said softly. "Brendanus says it's going to rain."

She gave a laugh completely devoid of humor.

"Great," she muttered. "That means I don't have to bother with my hair."

Her hair was literally long, limp, and mousy-brown. It was the most difficult hair to do anything at all with, and although it suited her well in her daily style, it was hard to make much prettier for reaping.

"Well," I said once, when we were younger and thought it would be an adventure to be chosen, "I bet the Capitol people would make your hair very pretty."

But she was content, now, not to let the Capitol people have a go at her hair, because she'd rather do Lizzy's hair every morning than have someone fancy do hers a few times for a camera.

"Is your father out of bed yet?" she asked, brushing the blonde locks of her little sister.

"No," I said, sitting down on the cot that Lizzy shared with Amie. "I'm going to get him up when I'm done here. Hana's got the boys under control. Everything's going to be fine."

Everything was not going to be fine, and I knew it. Someone one was going to be led off to the slaughter and it would probably be a friend of ours. Nearly all the selections from seven were from the woods, because we were the ones who had to sign up for tesserae. Ellie had been from the town. Jack had been from the woods. Blight, the District Seven mentor, was from the woods, although he lived in the Victor's village now.

"Right," she muttered. "You're not wearing those clothes, are you?"

"Of course not," I snapped. "I'm wearing one of Hana's dresses. It's the green one, you know."

"It's very pretty," Lizzy said eagerly, and I smiled at her. She was barely older than my niece.

"You're very right, Lizzy," I said, tapping her nose. "It's the prettiest dress in the world."

"No," she said, as though I had made the most obvious mistake imaginable. "My dress is the prettiest one in the world."

I apologized, and we laughed, which felt good, if a little out of place on a reaping day. I reminded Trish about the coat, and Lizzy assured me that she would make sure that Trish didn't forget it, and then I made my way back to my house, walking slowly, thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that if I didn't get home, didn't wake my father, the reaping somehow wouldn't happen, I couldn't be drawn, Trish couldn't be drawn, and nobody else would have to die.

But that was silly. District Seven needed tributes, because the Games were mandatory.

I did make it home, and I could see that Hana had gotten everyone ready for the reaping but me and my father. That was my job.

I washed, allowed my hair to curl a bit as it dried instead of combing it as straight as possible, which I did most days, and put on my sister's pretty green dress. I decided that would be good enough. No ribbons. No buns. Just me and my sister's pretty green dress looking a bit cleaner than I bothered to look most days. I would still be the prettiest, most luxurious girl from the woods, even though I couldn't compete with the town girls, and Hana was always the prettiest girl in the district. She had my father's black, curly hair and big brown eyes and a face that was pale and perfect. She'd had every boy in the town after her, despite the fact that her father cut wood. She picked a boy from the woods, though, to her credit.

As soon as I was ready, I went into my father's room, to find him lying on his bed, eyes staring at the ceiling, mouthing my mother's name, just like every year. With a sigh, I climbed onto the bed, curled up with my head on his chest and said, "Daddy, it's time to get up. Can you make me breakfast, Daddy?"

For a moment, he would just lie there as my words sank into his consciousness, but as soon as he realized exactly what I had said, he would sit up, look at me, kiss my forehead, and hurry downstairs to wash, dress in the clothes I'd laid out for him (although Hana always told me which ones to put out) and make me breakfast.

I lay back down on the bed as he went about the first parts of the routine, and Hana came up, sitting down beside me.

"Would you like me to do your hair?" she said.

I shook my head.

"I wonder if he'll always be like this," she said sadly. "I mean, once you're done because you're too old–"

"Or because I've died," I said sharply, looking down at my hands.

"Don't say that," Hana snapped. "You might not be incredibly athletic, but you've got the blood for it, and anyway, you're smarter than anyone I've ever met."

Well, that was true. I had always been the smartest in District Seven, but would that translate outside of my home?

"Scarlett!" my father called. "Breakfast is ready! Hurry up, we've got to go!"

Hana and I exchanged a look.

It wasn't really breakfast, of course, although he made me breakfast foods. It was well into the afternoon by the time I sat down to eat. Still, I ate the food quickly and followed my family out the door of our house, down the road, and into the town square, where the other eligible children were lining up by age.

Trish found me quickly and took my hand, leading me over to the other sixteen-year-old girls. I didn't know many of them. I didn't play nicely with girls my age, or anyone, really, except for Trish. I said what I thought far too much for anyone to want to be around me except for Trish, who knew and was nice to everyone. Somehow, much to her mother's dismay, she decided that I would be her best friend, and as I didn't have any other friends, I didn't really have much choice in the matter. Not that I wasn't pleased.

"Are you nervous?" she whispered.

I nodded.

Of course I was nervous. She was nervous. Every person standing in the square was nervous, except for those making bets, but they didn't have children going into the reaping, so they didn't care much what happened to all of us. Someday, that would be me, if I lived long enough. Honestly, the idea that I would anger the Capitol enough to be killed wasn't such a far-fetched one, and I considered it a very real possibility that I would be forced to keep my mouth shut, if not outright killed.

Our mayor and the Capitol escort, Parris Kristal, were going about the usual shenanigans of reaping, reading the same things they read every year that no one cared about, and Blight, the mentor, just sat there like a stone, unfazed by any of it.

"Ladies first!" Parris finally said, and Trish grabbed my hand, terrified, I think, that her name was about to be called.

But it wasn't.

When Parris Kristal flattened out the little piece of paper, the name that came out of her lips was "Scarlett Delannoy!"

Automatically, I wrenched my hand from Trish's grasp, made my way forward to the stage, and stood there like a stone as Parris Kristal congratulated me. Almost instantly, I decided on my strategy and smiled at her sweetly, a smile that I had seen Hana use a hundred times but never tried on until that moment.

There was applause, a bit more vigorous than usual, probably from all of the people who hated me.

Not everybody hated me. There were plenty of people who didn't care about me, or didn't know me, or actually sort of admired me, despite the fact that none of them had enough guts to be friends with me. Not that I really wanted most of them as a friend, in any case.

The boy they called was Chance Buckley, a thirteen-year-old from the town who had less of a chance than anyone I'd ever met at surviving the Games. He was small, mousy, and a bit of a pleaser. Pleasers might make alliances, but they certainly didn't survive them.

More speeches, more ceremony, and then we were taken to the town hall, put in separate rooms, and our families were brought to us.

My father, my sisters, my brothers, my niece, my brother-in-law…. They all were standing before me, and it hadn't really sunk in yet that I was leaving, probably never coming back. My father would barely look at me, and just sat in a chair in the corner of the room, face in his hands. I gave them all kisses and hugs, tried to ignore Alyson's crying (for although she didn't have a concept of what was happening, she knew it wasn't something anyone liked), and walked right over to my father.

He didn't look up.

I curled up into his lap, petting his balding head like I had as a child, and whispered, "Daddy, please look at me."

He dropped his hands from his face and to my surprise I saw the tears. My father was crying. My father was crying because of me.

And I was going to die.

I kissed his scraggly cheek softly and said, "Daddy, I'm going to do what I can, all right? Can you do me a favor?"

He nodded.

"Can you look after Alyson for me, Daddy? Can you make sure she's all right?"

He nodded again.

Before I knew what was happening, he hugged me tightly, tighter than he ever had before and whispered, "I love you, Scarlett."

I didn't even know what to say.

They were taking my family away before I'd recovered myself, and it was then that Trish came in, tears filling her eyes, grasping me tightly.

"I don't want you to go!" she cried. "What am I going to do without you?"

She would be fine, I knew, but I indulged her melodramatic panic. She had plenty of friends. She would find a new best friend, one her mother actually liked, and she would be just fine.

"Take this," she whispered.

It was a small necklace with a green bead, one that we'd made one day in the woods when we were younger. There was no significance. It was not a symbol of luck or anything like that. It was just a token of our friendship, and I couldn't think of any better District token.

"I'll wear it during the Games," I whispered. I kissed her on the cheek. "Play with Alyson for me, please?"

"Absolutely," she said, still sobbing. "Lizzy wouldn't have it any other way."

I wished I'd had a chance to say goodbye to little Lizzy, but I was being taken to the train, and it was all I could do to say goodbye to Trish.