Chapter Text
「 ✦ Everything will be okay. ✦ 」
The young boy knew this since he was small.
He knew no matter any crisis. Family, financial, district-wide or, Panem forbid, political crisis, everything would be okay. Why wouldn’t it be, after all? Their country had endured so many hardships, yet still stood unwavering and proud.
The boy saw this in his family life. Heard it in the fun he had with his siblings, the laughter free of any worries.
He felt it in his mother’s love. Her cuddles and kisses, in her soothing, when the young boy missed his father deeply. In her calm but firm voice, he and his older siblings grew worried about his extended time away at sea. He always returned, sometimes a little too briefly for the young boy to appreciate, but his father always returned safe and sound with their ‘uncles’.
The young boy, who began to learn his home’s name.
“District Four, like the number! It’s weird and funny, right? We live in a number! Ha, I like it, though. Four is awesome, look at the place! We got beaches, turtles, fish, and boats. Imagine living in a place like, uh… Eight! Or Twelve, that’d really be so sad and boring. Breathing coal dust doesn’t sound real fun, that’s for sure… Lepida! Are you even listening to me?”
District Four was a place of sunshine more often than not, which meant that the neighbourhoods and beaches were fair game for kids and teens alike. Summer was a season full of barbecues, bonfires, and night outs so late they’d see the beauty that was dawn each morning.
The young boy remembered the wonder he shared about the world, the dreams that he and his brother had in life, and the secrets they’d confided in each other when they had sleepovers in each other's rooms.
During the winter, in the early dawn of the young boy’s eighth birthday, he and his older brother sat in their garden, bundled up in coats to not freeze themselves to death. As they silently sat, watching the dawn sprinkle light across the glittering ocean, the young boy’s brother confided in him.
“I’m gonna flunk the Academy test.”
“You haven’t even taken it. You’re not a psychic, Cory, so don’t get all ‘oh my gooood mom’s gonna kill meeeee for not studyinggggg’ before you’ve done them.” The young boy responded.
“Okay, firstly, I do not sound like that when I complain! So, say that again and I’ll noogie your butthead so hard it’ll leave a dent in your skull. I just… It’s not that I haven’t studied. I haven’t, but not because I’m lazy or not motivated. I just don’t wanna train. Or a Career in the Games. It’s just something I don’t find appealing.” His sibling sighed and watched wave after wave roll in.
“But wouldn’t it be cool to leave here? Go fight and make everyone here proud of you? Lots of attention from girls, too.” The young boy nudged his brother with his elbow, to which Cory rolled his eyes while trying to hide his flushing face.
“I guess? But, like, if you get picked, you gotta go kill AND get out alive? Not to mention, no matter which academy you go to, you’re up against basically every other training teenager in the district. Odds are insane. But y’know what?”
“What?”
“I’m okay with not getting it when it happens. I suck ass at school anyway, I flunk next to everything besides P.E. If there’s anywhere I think would be fun to work, it’d be with Dad and our uncles.” Cory seemed to light up with the words. The call of the sea lured him as it had lured their father.
“Our ‘not-uncle-uncles’.” The young boy teased.
“Oh my Gooood, you are so annoying, Latimer,” Cory groaned, elbowing his little brother in the side to emphasise his point, “ You know what I mean. Nature and the sea. That’s my calling. Always have been, always will be.”
“Makes you sound way older than eleven, though. Like an old man, no- you sound like Uncle Jenkins!” The image of Cory’s pre-teen face atop their Uncle Jenkins body, well, the two couldn’t contain their laughter at that thought. It took a minute or so for them to settle, and a comfortable silence fell upon them as they watched the sun slowly rise more and more.
“Makes sense.” The young boy said.
“What does?”
“You being a sailor. Mom and Dad want to send the best Cressey kid there is. I’m the bravest of the family, after all.” The young boy boasted childishly. How he loved to tease his brother, and Cory the same in return.
“Yeah, brave, mhm. How did your first school day go? Oh, right! Crying in a closet about eggs.”
“You lied to scare the heck out of me! You lied to me, put it in my head if I were the last outside for break, people would crack eggs on my head! Not even other people, my classmates! I think every five-year-old would cry.”
Cory rolled his eyes, wrapping his arm around the young boy’s side into a side hug. Though the young boy outwardly huffed in annoyance, deep down, he adored the affection his elder siblings showed him.
“You’re such a baby, God. I was doing my brotherly duties to you by making you fear eggs,” Cory chuckled. “You’ll always be our family’s baby. But that’s not always a bad thing. Means everyone’s doing their best to give you the best of everything. Just don’t forget us when you’re all big and famous in the Capitol, got it?”
“Got it.”
「 ✦ Everything will be okay. ✦ 」
Loyalty comes above all else.
Dedication and hard work provided results and success, and these were just as important.
Never were they to question the Capitol, its authority, or its government. It was simple, after all, they were the reason their family was able to sustain itself, with their mother’s service, their father’s fishing business, and the Capitol was to thank for such a wonderful life in Four.
So, as the young boy grew older, he was taught this. It drilled into him as he began to mature
He followed in the footsteps of his mother, Actinistia, learning. Training with the naval corps, serving the Capitol and Panem for decades, it taught her nothing but fierce and honourable loyalty to the Capitol.
She taught this to his older sister, Lepida, who accepted and understood it better than anyone expected. She taught it to his older brother, Cory, who seemed more hesitant and resistant in the beginning. And she taught her youngest son, who understood and took her words to heart, never doubting her words for a moment.
Loyalty took many forms as he grew.
In his family, in a friend who had once been lost, in friendships that would grow from one to four, and in his government.
At age eleven, a year before he began his formal training at the academy he had selected, the Institute of Virtue, the young boy’s mother sat him down for a conversation that she held great importance in. She took his hands in hers as she spoke, her voice soft but firm.
“Latimer, I need you to remember what I am going to tell you. Remember it through all of training, and wherever your life takes you after the Games. You have always been thankful for what the Capitol does for us, haven’t you?”
The young boy nodded.
“When you begin to train as a Career, whether you are selected as a volunteer or not, I want you to keep your ears open at all times. You are going to come across many people from all paths of life in this district. It may not be as big as Nine or Ten, but we both know it’s still large enough to hold many kinds of people.”
“Why? Loads of people train, it's a place to learn. Why do I need to listen to people? It's rude! You tell me off loads about how eavesdropping is rude.” He counted.
His mother sighed deeply and squeezed her youngest son’s hands gently.
“It isn’t, in this case. Darling, I need you to listen. There will be people out there who aren’t as thankful as you and me. Who hate the Capitol? So much so, they are willing to go to war. Tear our country and people apart, all for the sake of violence. They are bad people, sweetie.”
“Well… I don’t know! I’m confused, Mom. Shouldn’t bad people be allowed to change?”
The look of heartbreak that crossed his mother's face was a look the young boy would never forget.
“They should, my dear. I hope that with time, it will happen, but those people are rebels. They are everywhere, hidden in plain sight. I know that they are the same as you and me, humans. I just can’t…You know Uncle Patrick, do you remember his wife?” His mother’s voice was soft as she spoke.
As if bringing up the topic could conjure ghosts from the past.
The young boy shook his head, curious at the mention of a wife he had never heard of before.
“She died some time ago. It was right before the two hundredth Quarter Quell, the week of the reaping. Nobody knew it, but rebels had left explosives around the city centre. They went off one day with no warning. It was devastating; so many families lost loved ones that day. His wife was one of them… He still misses her, Uncle Patrick just prefers not to talk about it anymore.”
The grief in her voice, the sadness that covered every inch of her face, was something he hoped to never see again for all his days. Left in horrified speechlessness, the young boy gave his mother a swift but tight hug. When they pulled away, he looked into his mother’s eyes as he spoke.
“I’ll tell you anything, no, everything I hear that might have to do with rebels. I won’t let them do that again. I’m not gonna let that happen again. I don’t want anyone to lose their moms, dads, sisters, brothers, or anyone. Rebels are bad, horrible people; nobody good would do that.” The young boy said, firm in his stance.
“My little spy,” His mother said jokingly, caressing the back of his head lovingly, “Maybe your codename should be Pygmy, like those seahorses everyone says are spies.”
“You are so cringe, Mom, oh my god. Never call me that, ever!”
“No promises, it’s a lovely name. But before you go tottering off without your cringe mom, I do have this for you.”
“A present? This early?”
“A gift,” His mother told him gently, “It’s a little necklace, with this little seahorse, gifted to me by my father when I was small.”
“Wow, you’ve had it that long?” The boy said in awe.
“I’m not that old! Either way, I’d like you to have it. I was his little pygmy, and you will be mine. My precious little Timmy. Will you take it?”
“Of course!”
After that, the evening carried on, full of playful teasing, belly laughs, purposefully cringeworthy sayings that any pre-teen or teen alike loathed hearing.
The conversation that evening would forever be ingrained in his memory, and it would be one that he would carry with him into training, throughout it, and eventually, into the Hunger Games.