Margot'd had high hopes that perhaps, if she simply stayed in her room enough, avoided her escort and mentors, kept her head low during the parade, maybe she would be forgotten about. Existence and mere presence overwritten by something more interest, someone more eager to be here.
She knew none of this was fate. None of this was particularly fair.
All she had done was follow whispers, spread leaflets with ink on them, words calling for District Twelve's people to take a stand against the Capitol's relentless exploitation.
She hadn't blown up that mine. She had been nothing but a politicians last ditch effort at saving himself.
Her high hopes went unanswered. Come morning of the 6th of July, cameras barged onto the floor they shared with other Districts, and sooner rather than later, she found herself out on the hallway at the behest of her escort. Confronted with a camera at every angel, eager crew members asking for commentary of the elusive tribute from District Twelve.
It was entirely overwhelming. While Margot tried to make sense of things, she instinctively clung onto a person passing by, grabbing for their wrist to pull them into her room. To safety, to somewhere calmer. "Help me," she hissed.
It was a split second decision. One that, perhaps, she would come to regret in just a moment.
✗ CONFIDENTIAL TRIBUTE FACILITY SIGN UP SHEET records the attendance of MARGOT FLINT, a TRIBUTE from DISTRICT 12. The applicable authorities may note, that the 23 year old FEMALE / SHE/HER/HERS is RESOURCEFUL, HONEST, AND BOLD, but has also been known to be STUBBORN, BLUNT, AND RECKLESS. Similarities in appearance can be seen with DEVERY JACOBS. According to previous reports, they’re often associated with the gentle sway of the branches of a weeping willow in a warm breeze, a secret meeting illuminated by the orange glow of candles, and angrily held back teardrops.
BIO
Margot Flint had been seven years old when first her mother died of starvation and her father followed rather soon after. District Twelve did not look kindly upon those who didn’t have the means or skill to look after themselves. It did not look kindly upon those who were left behind either, because little Margot was left alone to walk to their neighbors’ house to ask the kind man if he would help her bury her dead. Dead and bury were words she’d learned a year ago, when they’d laid her grandmother to rest in the open space behind their run-down house as well. Two more graves were added to the patch of fresh grass and the slanted wooden marking of the first grave. Margot sat in front of them for hours after the man had left her by her lonesome, sun beating down on her, before the damp soil made her remember a small pouch of seeds under her pillow.
It was the last thing her father had given her before the weakness and fatigue overtook both her parents, and he’d promised to plant one of them with her. She supposed this was the closest she’d get to that. Margot used her hands to dig a small hole where she remembered the neighbor burying her father in, and gently placed the seeds inside before patting the earth over it once more.
There you go, Dad. We planted a tree. Just like we said.
The tree grew in height alongside her, but it had more strength than Margot could ever amass, living off of things she collected or when she put the little bit of pride, she felt simmer in her to the back of her mind and begged for scraps of meat at the butcher’s.
Margot grew up alone, and she found that there wasn’t really more she needed. It was her and the arching branches of the tree behind the house. Sometimes she looked at it and remembered her father, her mother and her grandmother right below it. Perhaps the roots had grown around them, hugging them where Margot’s arms could not reach. It was her, the tree, and the yearly screenings of the Games in the new Capitol provided televisions that only seemed to work when something important was going to happen.
People were plucked out of Twelve by a cleanly scrubbed hand like sacrificial lambs and all of them died that way, too, blood spilt for a country that didn’t even care to send its citizens food in return for the coal and the pair of born-to-die children. The Games weren’t a lesson, like the Capitol would have people believe, and neither was it gracious to only return one. The Games were a punishment for the poor, and an entertainment for the rich. A sick revenge fantasy on the youngest of each District, who would do nothing but pay for the crimes that weren’t their own.
Whispers of rebellion were carried through Twelve on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the defeat of the one that had started it all. Less inconclusive than the ones before, Margot joined. Hers was the simpler task of passing around messages and hushed information.
It was easy enough. Or it should have been.
How different the world would look for Margot, had no one given an anonymous tip to the Peacekeepers and gotten her arrested for passing a piece of paper just the way she’d practiced. The cell she was stuck in was cold and uncomfortable, and it was the first time Margot felt uneasy with being on her own. When she looked out of the barred window, she saw no gently swaying tree, but instead only the town square and the post used for the whippings. She was held in there for weeks and she wasn’t quite sure what was taking so long. Rebellious acts were punished as harshly as they were punished quickly and effectively, and instead there she was, sitting in a cell day in, day out. It didn’t help that the Head Peacekeeper was the one bringing her the food and that he was growing more anxious by the day. It must have been the Reaping, she told herself. He had a daughter. It made sense.
On that day, the day where yet another hand would reach into two bowls and pluck a piece of paper with a death sentence on it out of it, Margot was led out onto the square in shackles. Though, there weren’t as many slips of paper in the separated bowls on the makeshift stage. Instead, there was a single folded one in each.
It was then, that she found out about the special twist the Capitol had had in store for the first Quarter Quell in history. That the tributes of each District would be the ones the people had given their vote to die or to emerge victorious. Easily discarded and not cared about. The name that rang loud and clear through the square was her own.
And all because of a frightened Head Peacekeeper, using the matches Margot lit the fireplace at home with as evidence that she had been responsible for a mining accident not too long ago, mere days before her arrest. That she had lit up the mines out of hatred for the hard-working people in it. Not because her pursuit was to find an end to the Games, but because people now thought she’d attempted to murder people for nothing but the joy of their screams.
Margot was led onto the stage and looked down at the people that glared at her with hatred and grim satisfaction at her fate. She couldn’t tell if it was the sun that cast the orange hue over her eyes, or if it was just the way she wanted to see them all burn. Truly, this time.
