Chapter One: The Mad Man's Daughter

"Doesn't he look charming?" Griyya, District Four's escort asks to the other Victors in the room. I smile mischievously and wink at her.

"Well, you know me Griyya, I like to look my best." I say seductively and she turns as red as a tomato. I don't know why I still keep up my act when I'm at home. It's just with the Capitol people I suppose but that doesn't stop the pure hatred towards them burning on inside. Snow treating me like a piece of meat tossed to the highest bidder. I've been sold for three years. The first two years after I won my Games was just mindless flirting but when I was sixteen the rest of it all started. I get to go home occasionally. Not much though, I spend most of the time in the Capitol having to please Capitol women and sometimes men. Because they needed payback. They sponsored me in my Games and I didn't know that all they wanted was to get their hands on me… At the time I thought they liked me, they just wanted to keep me alive. I was so naïve then!

"Oh Finnick." she laughs.

"Getting on the Griyya now, Odair?" asks Callum, a friend of mine. He won the games three years before me and he's helped me out. Helped me get through it all. And we're neighbours in the Victor's Village. There are five of us Victors. Since my games they've become my dearest friends. When you get back to your district you hope that life will just go back to normal, that nothing will change. That you're friends will still see you as the same person, maybe people will respect you a bit more but that isn't the case. Not the case at all. Everything changes.

"Well you know me Cal." I say joking around with him. When Snow first sold me, I couldn't joke. About anything, definitely nothing like this but you having a friend like Callum helped me try and put myself back together. I'm still not complete though. There is still something inside me that was broken. That couldn't be fixed like the rest of me. I'm still fragile. Even something tiny will be able break me again completely.

"You snog anything that has a pulse and I'm still not good enough for you?!" Callum says, laughing.

"Well, didn't know you were that desperate!" I say, "I can always give you a quick kiss." I put my lips to his and start to kiss him.

When I pull away from him he says, "I don't see what all this fuss is about, he's not even a good kisser!"

I slap him on the face and say, "well I'm certainly better than you!"

"Behave children!" Mags snaps.

"Sorry." we both say together, turning and facing the wall. We're all sitting in a line, myself in-between Mags and Callum. Mags is one of my dearest friends. She's less of a friend, more a Grandma, like she is for all our Victors.

"Very mature boys!" Tria says sighing at them. Tria won the 55th games when she was sixteen and she is the wife of the Victor of the 50th games, Kay. They're in love and inseparable. I suppose they have each other as a relief of the games. The constant pain and doing everything in your will as to not break down. Trying to turn everything into a joke is one of my ways.

"You have your husband and I have my Callum!" I say to her and make kissing faces at him.

"Not for long mate." he says when a Peacekeeper comes to summon them on stage for the reaping of the 70th annual Hunger Games. "I'm going to propose to her!"

He is referring to Daisy, his girlfriend. Great, I'm going to be alone again, I think dismally. I walk onto the stage flashing me oh-so-charming smile for the people of the Capitol wearing my navy blue suit with the green tie. I sit down and when I sit I see the camera pointing at me so I wink. Should please some of the Capitol viewers.

I sit through all the rubbish about the Treaty of Treason looking out among the people of my District. The poor children who looked terrified. I remember my reaping. I had been fourteen. I stood with the crowd of boys my age in the roped off are feeling sick to the stomach. We were speculating on who'd volunteer this year. More often than not there was a volunteer; we are after all a Career District, if the smallest. It's always One and Two but a small number of people from Four tend to train and then volunteer when they're eighteen. That year however they called out my name. I walked up to the stage, it hadn't sunk in, I was sure someone would volunteer.

As I stood there longer I realised no one was going to step up and take my place. All I could do was try not to show the fact I was shaking as Griyya asked my age. I almost threw up. Consumed in that memory I don't realise a young boy stood on stage. No one volunteers for him. His eyes are wide in shock, like a startled hedgehog. "Brendan!" I hear someone in the crowd shout out. It's a girl. "Brendan." they screech again and I close my eyes. It reminds me of my dad at my reaping. Peacekeepers had to take him away. No one came to say goodbye to me as he wasn't allowed and I my mum died when I was three. She drowned at sea. Now even my dad is dead. He died two years after I won. Heart attack. I have no siblings so I guess Mags is the closest thing to family I have.

I look at this poor Brendan kid, who says he's twelve. It makes me feel sick. I hate the Capitol! I see he's on the brink of tears. Poor kid, he has no chance. Then Griyya puts her hand into the girl's bowl. "Annie Cresta." she reads out. I see a girl walk out of the sixteen year old section. She is pretty.

She isn't the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, no, but she has shoulder length dark brown hair that would be longer if it were straight. Instead it is wavy like the ocean waves that I watch often in the sea beside District Four. I just watch them crash against the shore, form, then break. It's relaxing. I see her eyes are a bright green, like most residents in District Four. The sun light is reflected in her eyes and her pale complexion helps them stand out too. The longer I look the more beautiful they seem.

She walks to the stage and no one volunteers for her. I hear mutters throughout the crowd. A strangled cry echoes around and she sees an old man being dragged away. She stands on the stage biting her bottom lip; I suppose it's to stop her from crying. "Hello, Annie. How old are you?"

"Sixteen." she answers quietly, looking down at her feet.

"Well, then here are our two tributes, Brendan Hiffen and Annie Cresta." Griyya says and we Victors file of stage. This year is Mags and I are mentoring.

"Not looking too good this year boy." Mags says to me once we're offstage.

"We don't know yet." I shrug back in response.

"He's twelve and that Cresta girl is Michael's daughter." Mags mutters in her usual voice which a few people find hard to understand but I've learnt how to.

"Michael Cresta, the mad man?" I ask her. Everyone in District Four has heard of the mad man Michael, who makes the fishing nets. The children spread rumours about him when I was at school. He turned mad twelve years ago. I remember Annie Cresta, the daughter, the strange girl who was in the class three years below me. I saw her cry a lot, at lunch on her own. Everyone avoided her, because she was the daughter of the mad man, so did I. But I left school after I won my games, so she would have been eleven when I last saw her. She looks very different now to what she was like back when I remember.

"He's not mad. His wife killed herself." Mags says.

"Oh." it's all I can say. I feel bad now, for running past his house and avoiding him all the time. For believing the rumours, even spreading some myself. And poor Annie. Eating alone at lunch, no one talking to her and the being made fun of everyday by the other children, including me.

"Well that's life Finnick. Michael's actually a good friend of mine. Annie's too nice to harm a fly." she says.

"It'll be different in the arena." I tell her, "It's always different."

"Really? I remember she used to rescue the turtles on the beach that were tangled in litter."

"Well then Mags, I guess our job this year is harder than usual." I state, picking up mine and Mags' luggage from the room we were sitting in before and getting ready to say goodbye to our friends and District Four.