Hector Reese - District 10 - FIN

He never knew what it was like living in a world where someone would love him.

He was sad, because his parents died at a young age, but his life was rich. Rich of people that cared about him as much as his mother and father could have.

His sister, who was one year older made sure that they were safe and sound in the streets until they could find somewhere to live for the night.

Those nights, they would spend together, looking at the stars, and wondering what was the point of them living on their own.

They both knew that they had other people that were willing to take them in as long as they promised to follow their rules. Those rules weren’t extreme.

Nothing sinful.

Nothing extreme.

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When they were kids, their parents owned a farm, and Hector used to run around the place, half doing work, and half playing around with the live stock because at the age of six, he didn’t understand that working and having fun were two different things.

His parents didn’t mind though, because what he lacked was made up by his sister.

She was beautiful soul at the age of seven, and something that Hector could look up too.

He was mesmerized by her work ethic just as much as the words that she spoke.

When they were in public, the family wondered if she was their child because her worlds came out like crystals that no one would predicted. No one could believe just how beautiful they were either, and that is what made everyone doubt she was Reese blood.

Their mother was lost in her despair, and their father was tied to his grief. Both of them losing hope while they aged up and out of the reaping. Sometimes they used to wish that they would be reaped so they could just throw themselves on a blade and end their lives.

But then they had Hector and his sister, and that made them rethink the beauty in their life.

It made them think about the purpose that they had in a world like Panem.

All the way up until they were caught up in a barn fire that they didn’t expect to come so suddenly.

They were in trouble with the wrong people, and so to get them to act quicker on triggers that they had no clue how to control.

The fire grew and while they tried to control it, they didn’t realize that everything would cave in on them.

So at the age of 12, Hector lost the two people that protected him. The two people that could understand his want to live a free life.

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You see, there was more to him than just a boy that couldn’t differentiate work and play. No. There was a boy who didn’t know how to behave himself because he could not focus. Simply stating it was hard, because people thought there was something wrong with him when he was younger. He would be told to do one thing and while doing it, he would find something else… A bug on the ground, a gust of wind assaulting him, a fish popping up from the pond in the back of their house, and he would stop.

His task was not important in those moments, and instead, he just wanted to focus on what ever distracted him in the first place.

He tried to keep his mind in one place, but that was too hard. When he tried thinking about one thing, a second thing would blindside him, and his mind would go straight there.

Its why he couldn’t stay in school long. He would get distracted and wonder off to places unknown because that was easier than trying to make sense of whatever he was learning.

Especially after his parents died.

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And so that was why his sister made it clear that she was going to find them a new home that they could live in for the time being.

She asked around the district for quite a while, looking for anyone that might have been related to our parents.

Hector asked her why she did this, and she told him that he shouldn’t have to worry about it because it wasn’t important.

Until one day when she went missing for longer than an hour, and in that hour he raced around the district, desperate to find any trace of the one person that he had left here.

He found her, walking out of a house with a basket of food.

And when he confronted her about it, she told him that she found what she had been looking for. The lost relatives that their parents never talked about.

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And when they got older, they were sat down by those relatives, and told that their parents were never great people.

They got into trouble with the wrong people in the district, and before they could find their way out, they met their end because they could not pay what they owed.

The reason why they were never told about hidden relatives, was for their protection. Not Hectors. Not his sisters.

They didn’t want them getting mixed up in a world that they did not understand.

---

But Hector couldn’t take that answer at face value. No. There was too much at stake for him to do that.

He believed that his parents were people of honor, and valor.

But he didn’t know where to look, and he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to know where to look for the people that were responsible for his parents death.

So like his sister, he decided to go on his own journey. To find the truth and vindicate his parents to anyone that might have thought ill towards them.

However, most of his journeys ended in long nights of staring at the stars, because doing that was easier than trying to figure out truths that he knew he had no business getting into.

And so that was the lie that he chose to live.

And he distracted himself every time the truth tried to show itself.