quinn emberstatt. done for now.

Her first words were "Oh fuck", much to her mother's horror.

It wasn't necessarily the words that were the most shocking thing, more so her tone. Tired were her words, already over the world at eight months old. Exasperated and with a sigh, something you might hear at the end of a long week or after you've crashed your bicycle into your grandmother's favourite flower arrangement.

"Oh fuck," said Quinn Emberstatt, fists balled-up and flailing from a high-chair. "Oh fuck, fuck, fuck!"

Her imaginary friends were kids from the television. The ones she liked. The brave ones, the ones with vigour and cool hair, the ones who could put up a fight. They whispered things in her ears that made her giggle, they danced and sliced at thin air in front of her. They chased her through the halls of her house, but there was only one pair of feet thud thud thud thudding on the floor. Sometimes, she chased them.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" she screamed at three years old, cranky over nothing like most toddlers are. Ice cream for breakfast wasn't allowed because her Dad wasn't here, he had always let her have ice cream, but Mom wasn't budging. So Quinn did what she was taught by the television: fight back.

"I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU-"

Her Grandmother taught her some sense, as did Aunt Reggie. Her Mom struggled for a while after that. It wasn't the first tantrum she'd have and it wouldn't be the last, but it had made the most impact. Not that she knew it but the youngest Emberstatt was perfect and awful, somehow at the same time. It took a village to raise Quinn. Living, and dead.

Her parents tucked her in and kissed her goodnight and her friends from the television sang her to sleep. 

Saffron never let her watch the Games but kids have funny ways of managing to do things their parents prohibit. It's not hard to turn the screen on if you stand on your tip-toes so she drinks them in, their names, their faces. The cowardly ones are boring, the Careers are scary but she likes them. The girls are her favourites - especially the friends. Aranica and Dru. Lethe and Saskia. Inkling and Kiara. Heather and Learna. Emerald and River. Lace and Basil.

Saffron and Lucy.

At six she begs to meet them before they die. Her mother promises if they come back alive she can. Royce falls and Fayre gives up - years later she doesn't know who she should pity more.

She looks like her father, all scowl and steely light eyes. But she's got her mother's jaw and fair skin and both of their ghosts combined. She announces her name loud and proud, chin up, shoulders back, whenever she greets adults. But Quinn doesn't like the way the kids stare at her when she walks into class on her first day at school so she glares back, pokes her tongue out, grabs a boy by his collar and shoves him to the dirt at play time.

It's to be expected, the stares. The taunts. Not that she'd known that. All her life it'd been her and her grown-ups, the sensible lot, the ones that adored her. Even her siblings were at least a decade older than her. Grown-ups, in her eyes, that treated her with the utmost care. She's not sure what half of the children in her class mean when they ask her if she feels bad that most of her family are dead but she does know that they want to hurt her with their words - she's better than that.

So she does what the television tells her to do: fights back.

First day of school is cut short and she's sent home with a warning, but the second day isn't so bad. She's not embarrassed to hold her Mom's hand when she walks up to the building, nor her Dad's, nor Aunt Reggie's. Quinn starts to understand that she is only as important as her family are and some kids treat her better because of it. They smile, offer to sit next to her, play hopscotch outside, ask her about the Capitol. Nothing like her friends from the television, but they suffice.

She tells them about that grand, mysterious, extravagant place. Things about the train, the living quarters, the fireworks. That she's not allowed anywhere her parents aren't, let alone outside of the Training Centre. But the food is good, and the people there are nice enough. She gets to see her sister Juliet, Mom and Dad's friends, the kids going off to die. A shrug, but the other kids marvel. They whine, green with envy. Quinn doesn't know what the big deal is, they go every year. So what?

So what? is her favourite new phrase. Saffron catches her watching the Games unattended. So what? she cries. She pushes a kid at school, so what? Dad tells her off when she's up past her bed time, so what? Reggie threatens to wash her mouth out with soap when she swears, so what?

Her Mom is over-protective and Quinn doesn't understand why. What six year old would? She's not allowed sleepovers at the other kids houses or to play outside the Village past sunset. Her other siblings get away with near murder but Quinn can't move an inch without her Mom knowing and it's not bloody fair.

Sometimes she storms out the front door with her arms crossed and a frown that could murder, stomping to Aunt Reggie's or Kieran & Paige's house - anywhere that her Mom isn't.

Her teachers call her creative, proud, a little too ruthless. But she comes home every night like a wild storm passing because she has to feed the cat, a responsibility she takes very seriously. It's not easy being TF's favourite human but Quinn rather likes the concept. Her Mom still won't tell her what TF stands for ("That Fucker", a nickname that never quite left) but the fluffy animal is her most treasured companion, sleeping at the base of her bed every night as she dreams. 

"You know your parents killed people, right?" asks a boy one day in second grade. Quinn scowls, "Yeah? And?!"

That boy looks at her funny from then-on. Quinn just rolls her eyes, brushes hair out of her face, reminds herself to ask Aunt Reggie for a hair cut - her bangs are getting annoyingly long.

She's proud of them, her parents. The Games are still complicated and frustrating and she doesn't understand their gravitas, but Quinn does understand that many years ago her parents fought very hard to get home. And to her, that should be celebrated. Her imaginary friends fade to whispers in the back of her head but she eventually has to watch the Games in class and Quinn can name every single one of the tributes by heart. 

She doesn't much care for learning about cows and sheep and goats, kicking up dirt in their lessons outside. It's part priviledge, part youthful ignorance that leaves her mouth when she tells her friends dryly that she won't ever need to work, that she doesn't even own any cows. That leaves a few of her friends speechless, all hand-me-down clothes and worn-through shoes and patches sewn into dresses. Quinn sticks out like a sore thumb, squeaky clean from head to toe, seven years old and she doesn't even know of the riches that she has.

Cows are smelly and boring and it's true, she doesn't want nor have any of her own. But she does have horses, and Quinn loves to visit Ma Emberstatt on weekends with her father and toddle behind him on a pony, laughing when they rise to a trot and she bounces like a ball kicked around in the schoolyard. When thoroughbreds are brought in to class one summer afternoon she dashes to the front, shoving her classmates to the side, desperate to prove her knowledge about saddles and tacks and reigns.

Eden Turner is a name she stumbles across weeks into her learning about Quells. Quinn never knew the girl, for she had died months before she was born, but she became enraptured with her. She asks her Mom about Eden and Saffron almost chokes on her dinner. She asks her Dad and he just kisses her forehead, holds her tighter. She asks Kieran and he stops breathing for a moment. 

Nobody would tell her why Eden had volunteered. Nobody would tell her how Lethe had felt, nor Patricia. So she made up her own story, watched her raise her hand in the crowd, watched her fall in the manic Bloodbath. Eden meets her in her sleep and they become friends, skipping alongside her in the evening light and giggling about boys in the dark. 

She's fascinated by Enzo, the boy Mom and Dad bring home from the Capitol. She doesn't understand why Temple and Lorenzo had been allowed to come home but she doesn't care - he's funny, and he listens to her, and answers most of her questions. Like how dying was, and what the other tributes were like, and if coming back was like waking up slowly on a Sunday morning or if it was like Momma banging on your bedroom door telling you you'll be late for school. No matter the reason, she is completely in awe of him. A little jealous, a little scared. But in absolute awe.

When Annie Morrisen turns twenty-one Saffron throws her a birthday dinner in the Capitol. Quinn is confused and jealous, stomping about Level Ten in a strop because she wants it to be her birthday. But it's not her birthday - not yet - and though she is reminded of this a green envy boils in her chest, chasing after Blue the escort and cackling with a toy knife that looks like Diana's of the 81st.

Later that night, after she's run about and napped on the sofa and eaten leftover dinner she overhears Saffron telling her Daddy about Annie's wicked father and Quinn sits smugly with her toy horses, latching on to Mace's leg the rest of the week. When she falls asleep she dreams of cake and ponies, a reality only Quinn Emberstatt could live.

Quinn Emberstatt is not awful. Not all the time. She is a handful, too spirited for her own good, a tongue too sharp for her age. She is desperate to be independent. It's true. But she is diligent and hard-working. She does all her chores at once and does them well, even if it takes some nagging from Grandma or her Mom. When her Dad raises his voice and tells her no she obeys - most of the time. She helps Grandma in the kitchen and loves to bake, pattering around their neighbourhood with a box for Reggie and Kieran and even Ansgar. On occasion she brings a box to school too, distributed evenly around the classroom. Begrudgingly she shares her father's attention with the other children in her family - but as she gets older, she begins to learn patience.

She's a good kid, underneath it all. All that morbid curiosity, the tantrums, the entitlement. She's a good kid - but only when she wants to be. Only when it gets her somewhere or someplace or something. And sometimes, only sometimes, she's good just for the sake of being good.

"Mom," she sighs, eight and a half. "If you have another kid I'll be so pissed." 

Saffron laughs, plays with her daughters hair. "You and me both, kiddo."

admin kay will skin me alive if i don't let her have dibs hehe