━━  a hunger games fanfiction.

     IN DISTRICT FOUR, THEY TEACH YOU  how to survive the Games. As a Career District, kids are sent to combat academies and taught to become killers, practically born with knives in their hands. They teach kids how to hunt, how to harm; there, children learn everything they need to know in order to survive the Games.

     They don't teach you how to survive what comes after.

     Nimah Caplan thought she was being clever, the day she volunteered for the Games. At age thirteen, she thought she'd make headlines as the youngest victor ever. She thought she was being brave, bringing that kind of glory to her district. After all, if Finnick Odair  ━  who won the Games the year before, at only fourteen years old  ━  could do it, why not Nimah?

     It didn't matter that she had never seen fresh blood spill across the ground before. That the knife in her hand was only dangerous as long as she was willing to wield it. She was going to win, and that was the end of it.

     Or it should've been. For in her triumph, only moments after volunteering, the male tribute was reaped. Nimah's blood ran cold as she saw her brother's hand shoot into the air, saw him shoving his way onto the stage to stand beside her. She'd heard her mother's anguished scream but hadn't seen the Peacekeepers drag her parents away as she was taken into the Justice Building with her brother.

     Winning the Games had always been the plan, but Nimah never meant to do so with her brother's blood on her hands. She'd been unaware of the plan that had been set in place by her brother and their mentor, Finnick, until the very end  ━  and then she had to slide a knife between her brother's ribs and count his breaths until the cannon sounded, declaring her terrible victory.

     In the years since, Nim, like all victors before and after her, became something of a shell. She could not look at herself in the mirror, yet for all the cameras, she wore her epithet as youngest victor with glittering pride, as if it were not a heavy crown she could never take off. Nights in the Capitol spent warming the beds of the highest bidders, days spent lying on bare floors with cold sunlight leaking through the windows, drenching her in saccharine gold.

     They do not teach you to survive what comes after you win the Games, Nim realised too late, because there is no surviving the Games. No matter what happens, some part of you dies in that arena, left to rot in the grass.

     She thought winning the Games would bring glory, and instead it cost her everything she had.

     When the Quarter Quell rolls around, and it is announced that tributes will be reaped from the existing pool of victors, Nim sees it as an opportunity to save something. All her life, all she had been taught was to destroy, and she'd done it so successfully that everything and everyone around her had fallen to ruin.

     By volunteering for the Quarter Quell, she'd be able to save someone else from their terrible fate, and in that way, perhaps she'd finally be free.

𝖒𝖆𝖞 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖔𝖉𝖉𝖘 𝖇𝖊 𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗 𝖎𝖓 𝖞𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖋𝖆𝖛𝖔𝖚𝖗 !   ━━

𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟔𝟔𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬, district four.

𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟔𝟖𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬, district five.

𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟔𝟎𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬, district one.

warnings.     this story contains triggering themes including sexual assault & rape, prostitution, self-harm and thoughts of suicide, death and violence. these themes, along with others, are prevalent in the hunger games universe and will come up in this story, so please don't read if these things affect you!

      ALL CHAPTERS CURRENT & FUTURE OF THIS FIC ARE BEING POSTED ON MY AO3 ACCOUNT @/happyhauntt. this fic will be continued there, not here. all chapters for this fic have been removed except for the intro. PLEASE GO TO AO3 TO READ THIS FIC.