melissa catlyn || district six || fin

For thirty years, you've brought life into the world, one wailing infant at a time.

It started when you were a little girl, not much older than six years old at the time, after one particularly lengthy night where you had watched, youthful face locked in an expression of awe as a midwife had helped deliver your baby brother into the world with seemingly little incident.

It would be a moment that you would hold with you for the rest of your childhood. For weeks on end, you would often be found lost in thought, one hand absently pulling on a strand of fiery hair, blue eyes closed in contemplation, as again and again you would ponder just how mystical and captivating that memory had become.

And as you slowly grew from child to teenager to young woman, as Reapings came and Reapings passed with no hammer swung unto the heads of either yourself or your brother, it was a dream that you began to consider seriously.

And so, that is how, at age twenty four, you found yourself the assistant to the very same midwife that had delivered your brother, and, as you later found out, yourself as well. It was a fact that surprised no one, least of all the midwife herself. 

For months, you trained under the woman, first in a purely observational manner. You watched as she worked her magic, helping women deliver their children in a quick, relatively painless manner. 

Soon, you would be included in the process of hands on work as well, assisting her in some of the less important tasks and slowly learning just how delicate the birthing process could be. It was a procedure that you quickly became accustomed to, and before long, you were given the chance to deliver your first baby on your own.

Even today, you remember that first delivery - a screeching, dark-skinned baby girl - as clearly as if it happened yesterday. It was a feeling that even today is hard to describe - a mixture of awe, disbelief, joy, and pride that all combined into one wave of emotion unlike anything you had ever felt before. 

And though you would remember each and every baby that followed with varying degrees of clarity as years went by, you would never forget a name, nor a single instance of the feeling.

For the span of nearly two decades, you were lost in the bliss of ignorance, fully under the belief that you had the best job in the world. Once the strangeness of the profession had faded, it became a part of your life that you held close to yourself with pride, though the awe that was the miracle of childbirth would never fail to overcome you.

Nothing felt better than bringing life into the world, however indirect your role might have been.

But alas, life in Panem is rarely so unequivocally happy, and it was a fact you would be brutally reminded with nothing else but the Hunger Games.

After one such reaping, you realized with a start that you knew one of those names, for you had been the one to personally bring the person that carried that name into the world.

And you watched, helplessly, as the life you had helped emerge into the world, the life you had felt so connected to, was lost to the Capitol's Games, a trend that inevitably would repeat itself in the years to come.

Nowadays, your brilliance of your flame-red hair might be fading, your once smooth skin might be developing wrinkles, and you might not be as young and spry as you once were, yet still, you continue your job. Each day brings a new baby, a new life to assist in their first moments, and it is a profession that brings you great joy.

And yet the cycle continues itself, as there is rarely a year that passes nowadays where you do not recognize the names of the unfortunate teenagers that are sent to die.

With each passing year, you watch, hoping against hope, that one of the children you brought into the world, one of the children you inexplicably share a bond with, is able to return home.

But alas, victors do not come from District Six, and every year, you are forced to watch as, slowly but surely, more of your work is undone.