#thgrpg

Luck in district seven was a length of rope and no one could ever guess the length. Hazel was lucky once. She lived on it for ten years. It tasted like freshly bled maple syrup and smelled like shaved cedar. Her mother was a cook for the district's mayor and her father a carpenter. And, always, there was her older brother Jack. He was five years the senior. At once both annoyingly present and sorely missed. Those days remain to her only in sensory details, the colors bleached. She remembers afternoons in the workshop and mornings by the stove. For childhoods in Panem it was both indulgently long and viciously short.

The end came while she was sleeping and it didn't wake her. She'd have slept on till morning, unaware of the gunshot or the tears if not for Jack. He pulled her from the sheets and under the bed. He pressed a hand against her mouth to force the fear back in. Five hours later, when the sun rose like a red blister above the trees Hazel's father was dead. She never got the full story from Jack and it didn't matter. Stories have a way of outlasting people. In short, her mother had an admirer in peacekeeper attire. Liquor and opportunity did the rest. Her father stepping between them was good for nothing but target practice. That was autumn and by spring grief and guilt took their mother. One bullet. Two lives. Hazel thinks now that they were her first witness marks.

At fifteen, her brother inherited a business and a home. The latter was lost within the year and the former in two. Jack didn't have the hands of a builder or the patience. The hope for that legacy had rested with Hazel, but there were no more hopes to apprentice. There was hardly a hope for survival. They moved into abandoned housing without running water or electricity and made due with what they could. Hazel learned the taste of tree bark and how it might soothe an empty stomach for an hour or two. She learned the smell of rot. While Jack worked as a lumberjack, she bargained away her father's pieces. In this, grief became just another price tag. It was survival made bearable only by each other's companionship. They were bound tighter with every tesserae Jack took out; by every tesserae he refused her.

The caution was all for nothing. At thirteen, with a grand total of two entries in the reaping bowl, her name was plucked. At that age, she was skinny. She's seen the footage of herself, winced at the sharp jut of collarbones below her yellow collar. There's a distinct look all prey animals wear, it's a skin that human's can slip into. It's a skin that the children of Panem wear twice a year. The abstract fear of the games became a reality in an instant.

Jack could have volunteered for her, but he didn't. He waited for that second name before stepping forward. On the footage, he doesn't look like prey. He's tall and eighteen with sunken cheekbones and anger in the set of his lips. She hadn't known him, she never got the chance to fully understand. Jack Till, a brother who'd rather weigh his sister's odds in the games then the districts. It was his gamble and, as it turned out, his luck had always been better than hers.

They arrived at the capitol with a story. It was all a tribute needed in the end. The narrative set forth by the team was executed beautifully. Hazel dressed down to look more childish and Jack dressed in strong lines like a sentinel. A guard. He pushed her toward survival skills during training and told her to play the sweetheart for the interview. The capitol ate it up, and the sympathetic sponsors poured their wallets into seven's account. For Hazel, it was a like taking one breath at the reaping and then being swept down the river. She didn't take another for quite some time.

The games that year were held in an abandoned amusement park. The rides were faulty and temperamental. A roller coaster would run without warning, the teacups would start and stop like a scratched record, cotton candy spun endlessly at the food court caused hallucinations, and the hall of mirrors would reflect you as a rotten corpse. They launched on an enormous merry-go-round with all the goods and weapons at the center. The bloodbath was a mess of confusion with a sliding floor and plastic horses dropping in and out of your path. Hazel remembers bumping into a small boy from eleven and then watching him get killed moments later by a career. She remembers running and running and sticking to the plan. Get to high ground.

That meant the carousel. The climb was the most harrowing of Hazel life, but she squirreled away in a carriage and spent that first night alone scanning the sky. The next morning, Jack found her. Their roost high above the arena was ideal even if the ride clicked on at random times. Jack scouted for food in the blue hours of the morning and for a few days things worked like clockwork. That was until a tribute from twelve got the idea to hide in the carousel as well. When he locked in on them, a fight broke out a hundred feet above the ground. It was a fight Jack might have lost had Hazel not gotten the nerve to give the boy a solid kick to the shin. The pain and shock, along with Jack sent the boy down to a hard and quick death. The hovercraft that came to collect the boy alerted the career pack to search their area and they were forced to abandon the shelter.

They survived, as they had in seven, together. One shelter given up for the next and rest snatched where it could. Sponsors sent them food and one, iconically sent Hazel a child sized mallet with a blue and pink checkerboard pattern. Mutts released on the fifth day in the shape of demented carnival animals left Hazel with nasty scratches and Jack with a festering bite wound. The career pack ran into trouble with the raw combination of cotton candy and mutts. As others died, Hazel didn't feel hope only mounting dread. She knew the plan brewed up in Jack's mind. When there were only five, including them, left Jack went on the offensive. She's seen his attacks in the highlights. He was brutal. There was a satisfaction in those final hours, a sense of pride that turns her stomach even today. In real time, he stashed her away before each kill and set her out of eyesight. The last death took the better part of a day. It was a hunt for a boy only fifteen years old and injured. She thinks about him too often.

And then there were two. It was an ideal storyline for the games, and one the gamemakers were salivating to twist. They'd seen the writing on the wall and prepared for the possibility of a sibling finale. Jack's mutt bite had left him with a ticking timebomb and with a few lines of code and a marvel of bioscience he was feral. He turned on Hazel and what commenced was a six hour fox and hound chase. Real terror, Hazel learned that day, tastes like metal in the mouth. By all rights she should have died, but the hall of mirrors provided just enough confusion. She was exhausted and terrified and starving and when he came near she didn't think, she just gripped her mallet and swung. One hit didn't do the job. Ten did.

No glorious hovercraft raised her from the hall of mirrors. Peacekeepers came to remove her when she refused to leave Jack's body. When she swung at them they sedated her like a wild animal.

She was crowned, paraded, and celebrated.

She came out of the games as Panem's favored orphan. Before victory, not a peacekeeper in seven could be bothered to give a starving child the time of day. Now her guardianship was handed over to a big name sponsor. For Calanthe Price, she was a favored trinket to be passed around parties. She kept a smile on her face and clenched fist in her pocket. Those she let close, were inevitably other victors and kind stylists or escorts. Well-behaved wasn't the right word for her though. Birthday bashes held at Calanthe's expense often ended in mysterious and costly mishaps. A fire, or flooding, and one eventual sixteenth a small explosion. (District three victors and fireworks mixed well.) Her favor with her guardians waned quickly when she was no longer a sweet, young thing. Well-fed finally, she matured quickly and set her mind toward independence. And, at eighteen, she graduated into what some might call freedom. To her, it was a home in seven and a decreasing popularity.

Eventually, at twenty-five, she was able to retire from mentoring. She went home and built herself a workshop. In time, she taught herself her father's craft. It turned out that legacy, that story, did have more chapters. She was a bit of a recluse with no one to share her big victor's home with, but she was far from idle. Her handcrafted, signature furniture became a statement in Panem. To the capitol, she sold pieces at exorbitant prices. To friends in the districts they were gifts. Time away from the noise of the capitol, opened her to the whispers of rebellion in the districts. Her contribution to the cause came with her carvings and furniture. Each slab of wood she transformed into a sculpture or a bit of furniture came with a secret compartment. Perfect for hiding weapons or correspondence, perfect for smuggling things between district lines.

It was a tricky bit of business for one so unlucky. When Hazel came home to her workshop on fire and a bouquet of roses she was hardly surprised. Her orders were clear. Cameras in her home, a new (heavily overseen) workspace in the capitol, and a return to mentorship. Two decades later she wasn't afraid. She wasn't prey. She knew her story would outlive her. She knew to make it a good one.

Personality:

There are two sides to Hazel. The business side that knows how to chat with a sponsor and can choke down the taste of bile. The side, that learned the Price family the value of a smile and the words 'tell me more'. The second, more sincere part of herself is naturally quieter and more guarded. She's got a sharp bit of snark and a strong sense of herself. To those who know her well, she goes by Haz. If pressed, they'd call her loyal to a fault and laser focused.

Positive: Persistent, adaptable, loyal

Negative: fatalistic, reclusive, blunt