lake day | [mackenzie and violet, 96th]

A decade had passed since he was here last. He told himself it was just because he didn't have time but maybe the truth was something a little bit darker and more depressing. Growing up, the lake offered a form of escape to Mackenzie and his sister. It kept all their secrets, hid all of their evidence.

They stored their bows there, in the floorboards of the old abandoned cabin at the water's edge. Kept the arrows separate just in case, clustered into an old hollowed-out log near the tree line. There was an old, expired bag of fireworks from the time Mackenzie and Maxine fired off a few at the Justice Building back when they were fourteen and at the height of their resentment for their asshole of a father. And there, next to that windowsill, he'd once carved his name into the wall before Max called him an idiot and scratched it out. "If anyone ever does find this place, don't you think they'll look into the name written on the walls, genius?"

Now, looking back as an adult, Mackenzie found it strange how similar he and his sister were while at the same time knowing that she was vastly more clever than he ever was. All their lives, he'd been just a step behind: a second slower to react, needing just a few more words to get his point across than she. He could say he wasn't sure when exactly the tides changed and it became about Mackenzie fishing Max out of trouble, but it would've been a lie. He knew exactly what had happened to change them. And there were five people buried across Panem who knew it just as well.

For a long time after Max left, coming back here wasn't the same. He felt like he was holding on to something that wasn't there anymore: a child clinging to a security blanket that was no longer suitable for keeping him warm. Every time he walked through the door, he was hit with a barrage of nostalgia for a time in his life that he could not return to. He supposed that was still true now. But, as time wore on and boredom slowly overcame him, Mackenzie eventually found himself returning. At first just to hunt every once in a while. Then, he brought Marley once or twice. And it was dangerous coming here, he knew that. The lake, the cabin, all of it was far outside of Seven's borders.

It might have felt like the world had forgotten about Mackenzie Pryce nearly two decades after winning the Hunger Games, but the truth was that someone was always watching. And if he was caught here, it wouldn't be him who they hurt first. It'd be everyone else, because that's what would send the biggest message to someone like him.

After it became clear that Mackenzie was going to be raising Violet alone, he became less willing to take such risks. But today was different. Today, he turned 35 years old. That meant it'd been almost a decade since he'd even spoken to the sister he shared a womb with, if you didn't count the awkward, brief holiday calls.

And strangely enough, standing there on the dock and waiting for Marley to arrive under the mid-day sun, Mackenzie felt a strange sense of acceptance wash over him. He felt like he wasn't the person he used to be anymore, and he hadn't been for a long time.

But between the Max drama, and all of the drama surrounding his ex as well, it'd taken until recently to realize he did not want to be the person he used to be anymore. Who he was now is who he needed to be for the people who were still around. Like his mother. Like his brother. And especially, like his daughter.

Speaking of.

Mackenzie felt his face fall into a frown when he noticed a boat approaching from the other side of the lake. It was piloted by Marley, just as Mackenzie had expected it would be, but he could tell immediately that there was more than one person on the boat, and he recognized the long, dark braid just as soon as he laid eyes on it. As they paddled up to the deck, Mackenzie crossed his arms over his chest.

"Violet Faline Pryce! You'd better have a good excuse for this," he scolded, his eyes flicking between the young girl and her uncle, making it unclear which of them Mackenzie was actually talking to.

"Well why not?"

She could feel her cheeks getting hot already: no shoes but still struggling to keep up with her Uncle Marley as he gathered supplies for fishing from the shed out back. "He's my dad! I wanna spend his birthday with him, not with stinky old Lex!" Honestly, she knew Lex was neither stinky nor particularly old, but she had points to prove and you don't do that by being mild.

"We aren't gonna be gone all day! Back before sundown, remember?"

"So I just have to sit here all day doing nothing until you get back?" There had, perhaps, never been so great a tragedy as this. Violet Pryce didn't do well with idle hands. And clearly, Uncle Marley was not budging. She crossed her arms over her chest and huffed, turning and running in the opposite direction before he could anger her any more. The audacity.This simply wasn't going to stand. Lex was probably still waiting for her in the greenhouse, and normally Violet would've been thrilled for the chance to learn how to use a skill saw but right now, there were bigger fish to fry. Or were there? She didn't get to know, because she wasn't going to be on the stupid fishing trip!

Or so they thought. Hmph.

She stood, raced inside from the back entrance, slid on her rubber boots, and then watched Uncle Marley through the window as he finished snatching his tackle box from the shed's loft. Once he was set and on his way down the driveway, she sneaked out and began to trail after him. At first, she thought her plan was absolutely brilliant, and in fact she didn't get scared once for the first part of the journey.

But then he got to the district's edge. An old pine tree had fallen onto the fence there, but the fence was so strong that it still stood even with the tree laying over it. She watched as Uncle Marley used the tree as a sort of bridge, sliding down one of the limbs on the other side like a rope. First of all, it was against the rules to be outside the district like this and her Dad had told her a million times she was never to step foot past the edge. But secondly, she wasn't sure she physically could slide down the limb like that on her own. She turned back and realized she had absolutely no idea how to get back home.

She sighed, resigned to her fate.

"Wait! Uncle Marley, wait! Don't leave me!!"

And that is how she got to where she was now: sitting on the back of a fishing boat while Uncle Marley silently paddled across the waters of a calm lake's surface. She could see her father standing on the dock with his arms crossed, so she mimicked his behavior and made a sour face of her own.

"Violet Faline Pryce! You'd better have a good excuse for this!"

She was cooked.

"Well y'all were trying to leave me at home all day and Uncle Marley said Lex was gonna be building a bench and needed my help so I couldn't come but I didn't want to build a stupid bench and I didn't want to stay home all day because it's my Dad's birthday so I wanted to go fishing too!"

Uncle Marley and her father exchanged a look, and though Violet could feel her hands shaking, she kept them clenched into fists so that neither of them would notice.

"I just wanted to be with you on your birthday, Dad."

Her eyes welled with tears. She saw his shoulders relax. He opened his mouth as if starting to say something, then didn't. He held his hand out to help her off of the boat. They walked back up to the house, and her father reached beneath the front steps, pulled out a third fishing pole.

"This was your Aunt Maxine's. I don't figure she'd mind you using it. But-" he pulled it out of her reach just as she grabbed for it- "You cannot tell anyone about this. Not your friends at school, not your Mom- don't even tell Grandma, okay?"

"I won't! I promise!"