the h.unger games verse starter for @42piece !!
mentors, sponsors, the promise of riches and rewards if victory was theirs. gone were the days of the old games, of haphazard bloodbaths to remind them of the horrors of war. but were things any different than before? death is death, despite the capitol's attempts to make the games captivating, meaningful. the twenty-four of them have still been treated like cattle herded from one cage to the next. in a week's time, most of the tributes will be dead. in the end, there can only be one.
sae-byeok has to win. she must. her baby brother waits back home in district twelve, with the little sae-byeok has been able to provide for him on her own. it isn't enough ... because there is never enough in twelve. even when her family was full, and not in the fractured pieces it is now, they were never able to make ends meet. but this new twist on the games, a chance to scrape the bottom of the barrel all capitol citizens drink from ... sae-byeok would save her family, or die trying.
the shackles, she thinks, are unnecessary. as are the two peacekeepers posted at the door of the small, empty room sae-byeok stands in as she awaits her mentor's arrival but as is often the case in her life, she is left with little choice but to accept her circumstances and deal with them. she decides not to sit in one of the two chairs at the small table in the center, back leaning against the far wall in apparent disinterest until the shuffling of the peacekeepers gets her attention.
sae-byeok's stomach twists — with uncertainty, and something she cannot name — at the sight of her mentor; a small but beautiful woman, startlingly so. definitely capitol. her pale and unblemished skin would contrast sharply with sae-byeok's sun-scorched, coal-covered appearance should they hold their forearms against each other's. sae-byeok watches, stoic as a carved statue but still wary of the peacekeepers and their guns. there's the instinct to ignore her, but the long-watered seeds of desperation win out. the measured silence between them is broken by the low mumble of sae-byeok's voice. "you're my mentor, right?" back still to the wall, eyes only just leaving the weapons of the peacekeepers, she continues, "tell me how to win this thing."
