'I'll never let you go' Chapter 1

Clove
If you're reading this, congratulations. It means that you've overlooked the stereotypical 'Careers' the Fire Girl made us out to be in her book and are curious to find out more about us. Me and Cato, that is. You see, when you watch the Games you only get one side of the story. You see the story the Gamemakers write, the story they dictate. And when you've read the books, you only get Fire Girl's perspective on it, which, let's be honest, is a little biased. So, Cato and I are going to tell you our story, our way, our Games. But to start with, we'll have to take you to District 2.

Cato says I can tell about our childhoods. I suppose for him there's not much to tell. He's the eldest child of Darien and Eliza Burgh who were pretty well off; Darien being the youngest son of a previous Victor. He worked in a munitions factory as a supervisor, while Eliza stayed home with the children. There were three, all boys, Cato, Aiden and Saul, with two years between each respectfully. Darien and Eliza were rebels, constantly sneaking behind the Peacekeeper's backs and encouraged their sons to do the same. On Cato's 10th birthday, he was taken to the Training Centre by his father and given a sword.
'Kill,' Darien instructed his son, putting a dummy in front of him. Cato swung the sword for the first time and took the dummy's head off. Darien nodded approvingly.
Other than training, the boys had a happy life. They had food, their parents were proud of them and when they grew up they were going to be thrown into an arena to fight to the death on live TV. They didn't know about the last one, obviously, but it was going to happen, whether they liked it or not.

On the other side of the little hamlet the Burghs lived in, however, was my family. My father's name was Stellan Nightingale and he had been worked the machines at the factory ever since he was eighteen, having lived his adolescence without being reaped. My mother, Mireille, was a different story though; her parents were both Victors and her only sibling, a brother, had been killed in the Games when he was sixteen. Mum was beautiful when she was younger; I could see that from the photographs Dad had all around the house. With curly blonde hair and deep blue-green eyes, she was the perfect specimen of a District 2 girl. How my father married her, I will never know. But once she did, her parents turned their backs on their daughter and forgot about her. But Mum didn't mind. She had Dad, and, nine months later, she had their baby, a little girl they named Rose. A year later they had another girl, Laurel, and then three more: Viola, Ivy and Juniper with about a year or two gaps between them. By this time, my father was getting irritated. Girls, he said, were useless. Boys were winners; boys were born to be Victors. Five years after Juniper was born, my mother gritted her teeth and, for the last time, gave birth to a girl, a scrawny, dark haired, screaming baby girl. Me. My father wanted to drown me.
'Girls are no use to me!' He yelled at my mother, when she clutched her baby and begged him not to. 'I have five girls already! No one will notice, Elly, we'll tell the Peacekeepers she died at birth. No one will care.'
'I will!' Mum sobbed. 'I want my baby!' Dad sighed an exasperated sigh and relented.
'She doesn't look like she'll last the winter anyway,' he muttered, 'I won't bother getting her dyed'. 'Dyeing' was the norm for most District 2 kids born with hair that wasn't blonde. It requires their baby hair getting bleached at the roots so that any more hair they grew was blonde. None of my sisters had had to be dyed, but here I was with hair that was most definitely brown.
'Fine,' my mother said. 'She's perfect anyway.'
My father shook his head, and stormed out of the bedroom to allow my sisters to peer in at the new addition to the family. Rose, the eldest, was twelve and it was her first reaping year, but it was Laurel, the second eldest, who was in charge of us sisters. Viola was two years younger than Laurel, so was nine when I was born, while Ivy was eight and Juniper was six. They were incredibly close already and were not ready to welcome a newcomer, especially one who screamed so loud and had captured the heart of their mother.