nimian logan {peacekeeper - fin}

She was never meant for a cage.

Beyond the electric fences she stared, searching for any movement of the brush. A squirrel here, a rabbit there, a bird above her head, and perhaps a butterfly by her feet. She wanted to see it all, but there was danger separating her between a District and a free world. There were two people who would always remind her of that.

"Nimian, dear, come inside! Lunch break is over."

She frowned and turned on her heels. Her mother was waiting by the facility's entrance, clad in her white lab coat. Her father would be waiting downstairs in a room full of cages.

District Six was all about the science.

She was raised to know their laboratory like the back of her hand. Every cage, every vial, every decorative graph on the wall was ingrained in her memory like permanent ink. Her bookshelf at home was full of information about wildlife and human anatomy. One of her favorites was the encyclopedia of Hunger Game's mutts - until she was old enough to realize that these creatures were likely a result of painful genetic experimentation, and raised in captivity to behave aggressively toward humans. How did a mere child form such an opinion? The day she had to bury her pet rabbit. Mom and dad needed one for their newest study.

Pain creates knowledge.

When she was old enough to ask "why" she made their ears bleed with it. Why did they have to use animals for their research? Why did they hurt the animals? Why did the animals have to die? Why did nobody care about them? Her parents called it an unnecessary evil. She called it unfair. There was no use arguing; she was the child and they were the scholars. They wanted her to follow in their footsteps, but sensed that she would grow too rebellious to do so. As a result, she spent most of her leisure hours scrubbing and cleaning the lab supplies. They thought she might grow into it, but you can't contain a free spirit.

She wanted to spend as little time inside as possible. Her selective gang of schoolyard friends were the adventurous type, always basking in the sun to keep away from the politics of adults. Her parents abandoned the hope of taming her before she aged out of the Reaping. Instead, they relied on the small grain of hope that she would mature.

Little did they know, Nimian wanted to stay young forever.

It started out as a dare. Committing crimes or running away - any method of escaping the District and roaming free. Her friends wanted to try it all. She decided to commit the ultimate rebellion, and signed up for Peacekeeper training the day after they arrived to recruit. It was exactly what her parents wouldn't want, but she was too old for them to control. She was not going to be a scientist or a scientist's puppet.

She was going to travel the world.

The memory of her very first train ride would never fade. It was a confined space but through the window she could see everything - the expanse of trees and rivers, of cliffs and edges of the world that led to who knows where. That day, she knew she wouldn't regret her decision. She would work for the Capitol, yes, but in return she would be handed a ticket away from home. That was all she ever really needed.

Unfortunately, Peacekeeper training was no joke. There was little room for light-hearted jokes and flirtatious winks toward fellow female trainees. Mornings were brutal and afternoons were cluttered with responsibilities that she could never quite remember in the correct order. Evenings were spent trying to correct the mistakes she made earlier, because she would not be sent home on account of her own carelessness.

She had always been somewhat of an idiot in her own purposeful way, but she wouldn't let that hinder her from graduating. She snagged the fifth place ranking among her comrades, and then the top five ranks were transferred to the Capitol. Their superiors formed a team out of them - like interns, except with more power and weapons at their hips - and the five of them were forced to cooperate with each other. Lucky for her, she happened to adore all of her classmates. Even the broody ones.

With training out of the way, she could spread her wings the way she always wanted. There is not a day she doesn't laugh, not a morning she doesn't make a mess out of the kitchen trying to cook her unpopular vegetarian meals (because she couldn't stand to use animals the way her parents had used their vulnerable bodies), and there is not one pick-up line wasted on her fellow teammates, although it has earned her enough scolds to fill the pages of an entire scrapbook. She is the weakest of her teammates, given her lowest ranking out of the five of them, and perhaps that is enough to dampen her mood on a gloomy day. But if she's talented at anything, it's laughing everything off and pretending not to care when she does. At least that way, nobody gets hurt.

So, it's with a toothy grin that she sets out on assignments with her teammates, pestering them with cute commentary until they shut her up. That's the fun part about all of this - she can protest, she can complain, she can crack jokes without anyone truly hating her for it, not the way her parents did. She is finally free to be herself, even in the most dire of situations.

The best part? She never looks back.