Heart of Gold • Finnick Odair

-1-

ROSALIE POV

Life is unfair. And it will continue to be unfair as long as President Coriolanus Snow is still breathing.

I'm an orphan, as are my best friends, and therefore no other kids come near us. Not because we have no families, that would be wrong, but because of the reason our parents are dead. Well because of the reason my friends' parents and my mother is dead, they were part of a group that was planning a rebellion. That's why nobody talks to us, in case it's a family thing and we have the same fate as our parents. I get it though, anyone associated with rebellion would be killed as well as their family, best to play it safe and stay away I guess.

My name is Rosalie May. My first name comes from the flower 'rose', associated with love, beauty, and courage. My mothers name was Antheia May. Antheia means goddess of flowers in Greek mythology.

My father's name was Bruno, he was raised in the Capitol. He became a Peacekeeper along with other Capitol recruits and loyal District 2 recruits. He was a peacekeeper in my district, District 11, were he met my mother. They fell in love and were happy for a while. They had two children. My older brother, Brook, (a Brook is a small stream) and myself. Just after I was born, President Snow found out about their secret relationship and he had Bruno 'taken care of' (in other words, 'bye bye Bruno'). They should've seen it coming, really. Everyone in our District is of dark colour so when me and my big brother were mixed seeing as our father was white, it raised suspicion.

My mother was born, and died, in District 11. The fake story was that she stole some crops and was punished penalty of death for it. Though everyone in the districts knew the truth. The real story is that she, and my best friends' parents, were part of a rebellion group. Somehow, President Snow found out (probably through a peacekeeper or cameras) and had every member executed. Luckily for Snow, there were less than ten members so there was no problem in making up stories for their deaths.

With my mother and father gone by the time I was eight, it was just me and my brother. By the age of eight, I was in school full time (except for harvest when everyone healthy enough and above the age of 5 worked). My brother worked from sunrise to sunset like all the others in the fields. Brook took on his responsibility as carer of me without a second glance, he's good like that.

I've been best friends with my brother, Apollo, Luna and Ralph since we were all little, they were family friends so we were always together. At this point they are more like my siblings than friends. Except Ralph, there's always been more of an awkwardness between us. He was more my brothers friend than mine. Apollo is two years older than me and Luna is a year younger but is very small. Ralph is alone like us too with no other family and is one year older than me. He's slightly better off than us, he's got a cow. Doesn't mean he's rich though, no one in my district is, he can barely feed the damn cow as well as himself.

We barely get by, like most of the district, living in our small shack house with minimal food to survive.

My brother is fairly tall and rather muscular due to all the manual labour, though he's a big softie. I don't think he'd have it in him to kill a squirrel, let alone a person. Ralph supplies me, Brook, Apollo and Luna with enough milk to keep us alive, barely though.

When I turned ten, I began to work full time in the orchards. I was sent up to the top of the trees because I'm naturally small and skinny by diet. I'm payed with the absolute bare minimum of fruit. I get one fruit a day. Me and Brook cut it in half and have half each, Apollo does the same with Luna.

I don't know how I'd fare in the games if I was picked. I'm skinny and small, and therefore weak. But I can climb trees and identify plants that are and aren't edible as well as plants that have medical properties. I can climb efficiently and quickly. I'm smart, too, so maybe I could outsmart the cocky ones but if I came into a face to face fight, my chances of winning would be extraordinarily low, especially against a career who's been training for it their whole life and take part voluntarily for pride. I don't know, maybe if I was really pissed off I could do some damage.

Not much but better than nothing.