“If it weren’t for the war, Papa never would’ve been lured to Five with the prospect of new opportunities and greater wealth. The Beaumonts wouldn’t be the wealthiest family in the Capitol—far from it—but it’d be a modest living.
I wouldn’t be in this arena if it weren’t for Two. I wouldn’t be in this position in the arena if it weren’t for Cassandra.
She deserves to be an ugly corpse.”
Pandora Beaumont of District Five is declared victor of the 15th Hunger Games. It isn’t enough. She still has one more score left to settle.
Pandora's one of my crueler victors. Choosing to make her from Five might seem strange, but trust me, it was intentional. I plan to explore it more at a later date. Enjoy!
Working on Blood in the Water and my other Hunger Games fics, I so often find myself imagining these vivid back stories for side characters, and most of the time it gets compressed into just a few throw away lines or omitted entirely. Which is sad to me because I want to tell those stories!
With that in mind, I’ve started on a new side project. The eventual goal is to have 24 short stories, one for each tribute in the third Quarter Quell. I’m going in district order, so first up is Cashmere from District One!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Welcome to Ad Meliora! I've spent a long time crafting these characters, and I hope you all love them as much as I do. This story stars Mica Hawthorne, 18, the son of Gale Hawthorne and Vesta Gable (OC), as well as Wake Odair-Cresta, 19, the son of Annie Cresta and (the late) Finnick Odair, along with several other original characters I've made to fit the THG world. For now, Mica lives in District 2 with his parents after graduating from the Capitol Academy, and Wake lives with his mom in District 12.
Please be forewarned that this prologue contains mentions of marital tension, divorce, and accidental pregnancy.
The tension filling the room could put a live wire to shame. Something sparks and pops between the locked gazes of my parents as Dad enters Mom’s office.
“Gale,” she greets him coolly, her voice clad in iron. When she sounds like that, I know she means business. It’s the tone she’s always used for important client meetings, or to tell me off when I’ve done something stupid. It’s never a good sign of what’s to come.
“Vesta,” Dad responds in kind, taking off his coat and folding it before draping it over the nearest chair. The Military Strategy Unit insignia flashes at his collar. Solid steel from the smelting plant on the edge of town. “You look well.”
Mom presses her lips into the thinnest of lines, her expression unreadable. It’s been months since they last saw each other, since my Academy graduation. They were probably thrilled to never need to see each other again. After all, I’m the last thread bridging the chasm of their failed marriage, the only child neither of them expected.
“Mica.”
My name feels wrong coming from his mouth, even though he’s the one who gave it to me. I miss the days when it was Mike, or even Mikey. It falls from his tongue now with the finality of a rockslide, an end that I’m not ready to accept. My heart thuds against my ribcage as I look up to face them both.
Dad refuses to sit down in the chair next to mine. He stands with his back to the window, everything about him guarded from the crossing of his arms to the cold, flat look in his eyes.
“Tell your father what you told me,” Mom insists, shifting a pen between her fingers as if she needs somewhere to focus her energy. I know the feeling all too well.
I swallow against the knot forming in my throat and turn so I can face both of them at once.
“I enlisted as a Peacekeeper, and they want me. I ship out in a month.”
I don’t know how I expected him to take the news. Deep down, I wondered if he might try to talk me out of it, wanting to save me from the calamities of combat he saw firsthand during the Mockingjay Rebellion. But that’s not who my father is. Sometimes I think he finds solace in the heat of battle, comfort in strategy and logistics instead of his own family. There were several months, even when we lived on base, that my mother came home to a cold and empty bed. He’d sleep in the barracks with the soldiers who actually put their boots on the ground and return to his desk in the morning, making only short stops home in between. Mom always told me he was off doing something important, and that I needed to be patient, but I could see the strain behind her smile.
“I’m happy for you,” Dad finally says, his words measured to a fault. “It’s a good thing, serving your country.”
Mom breathes in like she wants to say something else, but they share a look that stops her thought in its tracks.
“Oh, and um, one more thing.” I wait until I have their attention again before I say the next words, knowing they can’t be taken back once they’ve left my mouth. “I’m going to District Twelve.”
This dream had been like any other: Nessa slept at his side, her head nestled in his shoulders and breathing softly against his side. Sleep brought a unique peace to her face, one that would often lull him back to sleep whenever nightmares woke him.
The only difference from the norm was that Nessa slept next to him completely naked.
Therein lied his current predicament.
I kept saying that this wasn't really how I wanted to introduce these characters, but now that I've thought about it more, I wrote and completed this and haven't finished anything else about either of these characters. If there's no guarantee anything else I have in mind for them will ever get written, I may as well post this now. Clearly this story wants to be told, even if I don't think this is the full story for either of these characters.
In honor of all the fics lost in the Purge, here is the (currently) only completed survivor.
The fact of the matter was that Ovidius found most people, male and female alike, to be dreadfully dull. They all spent their lives obsessing over pointless minutiae, never once having an original thought or asking an interesting question. There were simply so many things Ovidius found more interesting than people that he really couldn’t be bothered with most. All in all, it seemed highly unlikely that he would ever fall in love.
Sometimes Ovidius thought that perhaps if he had children, he might love them. Most people did, after all. It was genetically hard-wired into the human brain. But Ovidius had no particular desire to have children, and given that he was hardly able to stomach sex with Anaya Quinn once, the odds that it would happen without intent were negligible. So Ovidius fully expected to go his entire life without ever experiencing love.
And then there was Finnick.
This is the story of a morally bankrupt, genius multi-billionaire and the closest thing he ever knew to love.
hi all!! i just posted an update of my thg syot, memento vivere! if you're not familiar with what an syot is, it stands for submit your own tribute. essentially, 16 people gave me tributes, who i am writing in the 112th hunger games. (i developed the other 10 tributes myself for fodder purposes lol). if that sounds interesting to you, the fic is currently on day four of the games! the most recent chapter is linked above. it's a great time and definitely the crown jewel of my thg fanfic career!! and if you end up checking it out and having any thoughts, please do lmk!! :3
