Chapter Text
There are things District 12 never teaches you, even if you grow up surrounded by them every single day.
No one ever truly explains them to you, and yet they are always there, hidden beneath the ashes like an ember that never quite stops burning.
For example, when you happen to be born in the worst place in Panem and the most ambitious goal you can imagine is making it to tomorrow, you can spend an entire lifetime without ever knowing what it means to win at something.
You can die without ever discovering what it means to truly live. Or, more simply, to exist.
No one teaches you what it means to belong to someone. Either, even though it is one of the few certainties you cling to with all your strength.
You believe you have always known your ties and where your loyalty lies.
You believe you know who you are and where you belong. I believed all of this too, I was no exception; I was never special.
Then there comes a moment when everything I thought I knew crumbles in an instant, and everything they could take from me, was ever worth keepin’.
Everything I lived through, everything I lost, never stopped hurting and never will. But that pain suddenly became bearable.
I was there, when my life changed forever… I remember it.
I remember a small drop of hope that became a fierce stream, a new breath in the air, and two people trying to do the best they could.
I truly learned something I had never believed would happen to me.
I learned that… when a newborn grips his father's finger with his little fist for the first time, he's got hold of him forever.