Hello people !

So this is a new story. It's my first Hunger Games fic so we'll see how it turns out. I've had this vague idea of a story floating around in my mind for years but could never managed to put it into words. I read the books once more this month and also read a few fics to satisfy my curiosity and to see if it would trigger my imagination into actually imagining something. Here is the result. It is not exactly what I first had in mind but I actually like this better. Let's see...

Full summary: Panem watched as a girl volunteered to save her sister. The Capitol watched as she bacame the Girl on Fire and the star-crossed lover of her fellow tribute. The Districts watched as a little girl made the Capitol blink and bend. Panem watched as she became the MockingJay and set the world ablaze. But some people watched the girl more closely. What did they see? This could be read as a story or as a collection of oneshots. The chapters/OS will have different styles but they will all more or less be in chronological order, possibly with a few overlaps. Their length will vary greatly.

(Oh and I don't own any part of Suzan Collins' work: this is a fanfiction website, obviously I'm not the real deal. It shouldn't even need mentioning.)

(Oh again: English is my second language, not my first, so I'm sorry for any mistake.)

They Watched

Greasy Sae watched the man become a father. The man was a miner. And a hunter. According to the laws of Panem he was a criminal. But here, where even the Peacekeepers' stomachs were growling with hunger, he was just a man. A happy man – or as happy as one could be here, in the Seam, in District 12.

Greasy Sae watched the man raise his daughter. She was just like him, in more ways than one, that little piece of life. She watched as the girl smiled at her singing father.

Greasy Sae watched as the girl became a sister. There was a new flower in the little family. As fair as her namesake.

The little girls grew, the eldest laughing a bit less, serious but happy. And strong. Like her father.

Greasy Sae watched as the girls became orphans. The mine took both their parents one day. One was claimed by fire, along with other fathers. The other was taken by pain, grief, loneliness and despair.

So Greasy Sae watched the flowers lose their smiles. And their flesh. She watched as they were losing their lives, little by little, day by day. Until Greasy Sae knew that she would soon have to watch the sisters become flowers, for real this time, when they would sleep in the carbon dust-saturated ground. Like flowers in autumn they were withering away.

But Greasy Sae watched the eldest cling back to life. She watched as she took her sister back from starvation's clutches, then hunger's, slowly. Greasy Sae watched their bones disappear beneath flesh again. Life came back. But the eldest had not regained her smile. She only gave it to her sister. She became a hunter, like her father.

Greasy Sae watched as the girl who had lost her smile became a friend. A friend to another boy who had lost a father to the mine. Slowly the girl started smiling again. Soon the boy and the girl started coming to Greasy Sae with meat and to others with wild fruits.

Greasy Sae watched the girl go after she thanked her for the soup. That girl. No. Greasy Sae had watched her cease to be just a girl. Not a woman yet. Not in the usual sense of the word. Yet, in a way, she was. That girl-woman who carried the life of her small family on her shoulders. She was strong but Greasy Sae knew that she was also fragile, in her own way.

Greasy Sae shook her head and went back to cleaning the girl's bowl. She had no time to watch the world now. Tomorrow she would have to watch as two children would leave their home, never to return. She knew. She had watched children being taken away for the last 23 years.