Serpent

How Haymitch became the winner of his Hunger Game. Then she tells the boy about fear.

Her name is Aria Cero, and she is thirteen years old. Her hair is a nice, average brown, her dark eyes are nothing special, and she is the daughter of no one important. She does well in school with little effort, and even though all her teachers say she could go far with just a bit more effort, she doesn't try. Because for as long as Aria can remember, life has seemed a bit pointless to her.

She grows up in District Eleven, where they have just enough to know they don't have very much at all. Her mother is kind and her father distant, but caring. They both love her, she knows. Her siblings, both older and younger, are all too childish for Aria; she prefers to be alone, rather than in their company. Solitude suites her.

Sometimes, in her later childhood, she wonders what is wrong with her. She is damaged in some way, she knows, because nothing these people do makes sense to her. She is teased in school for not having any friends, and it never bothers her like it does the others. Maybe, she thinks, she just has no self-respect. Maybe she is so hard on herself that their antics are less than flea-bites. But she isn't. Aria expects nothing and gets it, and life seems so pointless she doesn't even care to end it.

There is only one thing that worries her: if she cannot care for herself, how does she care for her family?

She doesn't, as she finds out when her older brother is whipped to death for trying to sneak food out for their family. She is forced to watch, winces in sympathy for the pain of each strike, imagines herself there and how much agony that would be. But when the whip falls and his body doesn't even twitch, she realizes it was like watching a stranger die.

When she is chosen for the Hunger Games at the age of thirteen, Aria cannot even bring herself to care. Death will be a lot better than life, she thinks.

The Game this year is set in grassy plains. The plains, Aria quickly finds, are riddled with cave systems that might or might not be connected. While she is waiting for the start, Aria stands and realizes what this buzzing feeling is: anticipation. For the first time in a very long while, she has a real emotion. One she does not have to fake so that the apathy on her face does not scare the parents she pretends--even to herself--that she loves.

The buzzer rings and they are free to run to the horn of plenty. Some run for it right away; others flee to live another day. The bloodbath begins with a scream.

Aria vanishes.

She is very good at this. People have trouble finding her small form, she has found, especially when she doesn't want them to. So she crouches low and lets no one see her face as she darts into the giant horn, grabs a useful-looking bag, and turns to leave. Her exit is blocked by a boy she knows she can't slip past without notice. She stays in the gloom of the horn, waiting. He doesn't leave, and others come in, watching each other warily as they gather things. They have already formed a silent alliance; these are the Career Tributes.

Aria knows from other Games that the first few seconds of an alliance are fragile, and one stray blade can break them forever. She decides to be that stray blade. The knife is out of the pack soundlessly, and she wonders how she knew it was there. But then she has thrown it, and it's heavy handle crashes viciously into a Tribute's head, and chaos erupts as everyone believes it's them who will be attacked next and everyone else who will be doing the attacking.

In the fray, Aria notices the horn tapers down into utter darkness, and there is a tunnel back there for anyone who cares to venture far enough to find it. She escapes through there.

Three days later, Aria is one of four Tributes left. The Career's bloodbath in the horn left only eight of twenty-four still standing, and since then they have been picked off. Aria herself has killed one, digging a pit trap from a tunnel in the hopes of catching a wild pig. Instead she finds a girl with a broken leg. It is a mercy to the girl when Aria's knife draws across her throat.

Two more days, and Aria is one of two. She knows her opponent, a boy, is looking for her. She also knows he will kill her. That's okay, though, because she knows what life is meant for, finally. Or hers, at least.

She stands in the broad daylight of a field of tall grass, knows cameras are watching from dozens of angles.

And she waits.

Finally he finds her. He is vicious and mournful. He is a warrior with his sword, and a lover with his heart. He is a child made into an unwilling killer. She holds up her hand, and he waits. She tells him her story, she tells him the story of the girl from District Nine who fell into her trap, the story of District Seven's male Tribute, who she found near death. And the whole world is watching, because there is nothing else to see.

Then she tells the boy about fear, and how it is represented by a serpent eating its own tail.

And then Aria takes out her knife, and gives it to the boy who has dropped his sword somewhere during her speaking. She guides his hand toward her heart, and her last words are a whisper meant only for him.

"Make them remember why they fear us."

Haymitch goes home to District Twelve. It takes him a very long time to realize that he grew to love Aria Cero while she spoke to him. The day he does is also the day he starts drinking things more powerful than beer.

This started off as just some random girl in a random Game, to show how I think they usually go. Then I got to the face off between Aria and the boy, and I realized this could be how Haymitch won his Game, and why he's always so drunk. If you ignore Catching Fire, that is. So I made it like that. I do so love the Hunger Games series.