Chapter Text
Katniss hated the Capitol.
Ever since she was young, her father hadn’t liked the people of the Capitol. He thought they were rude, stuck up and overall disgusting. He hadn’t hesitated to voice these opinions aloud, which had earned him a few lectures from her mother.
As she continued to grow up, she noticed things she hadn’t noticed before. When 2 people went to the Capitol, which was by a process called the Reaping as her father had called it, they tended to not come back. As she was so young she didn’t pay any mind to it, but as she grew, she began to grow disturbed.
Why weren’t they coming back? What could be happening to them?
When one of her friends' sister got reaped and didn’t come back, she started to look into it. Of course she had heard of the Hunger Games, everybody had, but as she was so young she didn’t think about why her parents would suddenly take her out of the room or have hushed conversations and arguments behind closed doors.
Turns out that she didn’t have to look for long, as her parents pulled her aside a couple of days after her 6th birthday to explain everything to her.
To her horror, the Hunger Games wasn’t a type of holiday, but a match to the death. The Capitol forced 2 people, aged 12-18, to be randomly picked from each district to fight to the death in an arena. Districts 1, 2, and 4 trained in a special academy until they were 18, but the other districts didn’t have such comfort. They had no weapons experience nor any survival skills, which explained why nobody was coming back to district 12.
Although Katniss was only 6, she was thoroughly disturbed by this, added to her father’s influence and opinions, this was when she decided she hated the Capitol with a passion.
Throughout the next few years, Katniss forced her dad to teach her everything he knew about plants, hunting, self-defence and anything in between. While her mother didn’t exactly like it, she couldn’t disagree that it was a good thing to do.
She took a natural liking to the bow and arrow as well as the throwing knives. As she reached the age of 9 she knew how to gather water and purify it as well as knowing how to build shelter, hunt animals and recognise various plants.
Around the same age Katniss did, her younger sister Prim also began to question things. As they grew up together they took a liking to different things. While they were good at everything, Katniss preferred the hunting side of things while Prim liked everything that had to do with plants and healing.
When she turned 11 her father made her a custom bow for her birthday, causing her to go out hunting with him more. Her Mother also made Prim a custom healing book which had her entranced for days on end.
As the year went on, her whole family became closer than ever.
Life was great for Katniss, until it suddenly wasn’t. During mid-December a mine explosion caused many people, her father included, to be blown to bits.
Her life had suddenly taken a huge turn as her whole family became stricken with grief. Her mother was unresponsive and wouldn't leave the house, while her sister had begun to stop smiling and cried for weeks on end. While the Capitol had given them a small compensation for her father's death, it still wasn’t enough to keep them afloat as her mother had stopped her work as a healer.
At that point in time, Katniss decided that she would be the one to provide for her family. As her mother was unable to bring in any income, she would do everything she could to keep her family from starving to death.
She managed to bring in meat, fruit and plants to trade at the Hob, which brought in her family’s main source of income, as well as selling a few remedies Prim had made up.
Slowly, the residents of the Everdeen household began to heal. Her mother had retained her job as a healer, which caused them to get a bit more money. Although it took a while for them to forgive her, Katniss, Prim and their mother became closer and closer as time went on.
As she turned 12, she was officially eligible for the reaping. This instilled fear throughout her and her family as they realised she could be taken to the capitol and be made to fight to the death against 23 other children.
Thankfully, Katniss only had a tiny chance of getting picked as she had yet to take out any tesserae. She was only 12, which meant she only had one slip of paper in there with her name on it, meaning she had zero to no chance of getting picked.
2 years went by, and District 12 still hadn’t had a victor since Haymitch Abernathy, a drunk man who won the 2nd Quarter Quell 22 years ago.
As her 3rd reaping approached, Katniss couldn’t help but feel more nervous than her other years, which was weird considering she only had one slip put in every year, adding to a total of 3 slips out of a few thousand.
Effie Trinket, the District 12 escort, began her speech on how it was such an honour to be in District 12 for another Reaping, although everybody could see her disgust at the place and the people that lived here.
As she pulled a slip of paper out of the bowl of girls' names, Katniss could feel her heart pounding in her ears.
When Effie read out the name of the poor girl who would have to compete this year, Katniss felt herself freeze in shock.
“Katniss Everdeen!”