d2. ruth murphy

She sighed, placing the bookmark between the pages of the final chapter as her mum's voice echoed from downstairs. Her sisters were probably in the training room with their dad as usual and Ruth was once more avoiding that excessive schedule of beatings. The day in and day out grind within the training centre was plenty enough exhausting for her. She would never really understand why Laura and Eris continued to punish their bodies as soon as they returned home.

There was little sense to it, not when it didn’t really matter. How many times had a career victor been crowned? The numbers paled in comparison to the victors rising from the lower districts. Unlike her siblings, Ruth didn’t embellish her right by taking it out on the weak. She held no solid evidence or belief that should she get reaped she’d actually be able to win. The odds were stacked too highly against her, against all of them. Careers had been washed away time again, buried beneath the weight of lower districts choosing to ally and kill them.

They were targeted first and foremost, hell the 86th had two talented careers from one getting ambushed and ganged up upon on the third day. Ruth shook her head, hand running down the railing as she made her way to the kitchen where her mum was. Her mother was a chef, a cook at one of the most prestigious dining places in all of district two. When officials from the Capitol visited, her mother cooked for them, and Ruth found the activity relaxing. It was a good way to allow her mind to wander, consolidating all the information she had learned from the day by ingraining it in her mind instead of her muscles.

Unlike her siblings, she had no dream of becoming a Peacekeeper following her 19th birthday. She had no idea who she really wanted to be or what she really wanted to do. Both Laura and Eris were headstrong, tumbling towards their father’s ideals without a thought towards who they wanted to be. Their elder sister Sam had done the same, already a Peacekeeper traveling through the districts and making their family proud. Ruth didn’t get it. Their father was no Peacekeeper, instead, a man scorned from his career training and wanting to live vicariously through his children. She couldn’t fault him for his pushing, regardless of his expectations he was a good man and had never pressured Ruth into becoming a Peacekeeper.

“What are we making today, mum?” She sniffed the air, the usual fragrant smell of garlic, onion and oil hitting her as she moved past the kitchen counter and towards the stove. The vegetables on the table alluded to a dish that sided with Ruth’s tastes and she found herself smiling. Her stomach grumbled as she neared the delightful smell, leaning past her mother to look into the pan. The echoing sound of her sisters fighting filtered through the kitchen window and Ruth tried to push aside the flicker of annoyance that sparked in her stomach.

She knew why it annoyed her, the same way her lack of investment in training annoyed them. Her sisters and Ruth sat at opposites sides of a spectrum, both balancing their own ideas with what they expected from each other. Part of her wished that they didn’t try so hard to push her to be more like them, she never tried to force them to read more or spend more time with their mother. Her gaze drifted to the shed, flashes of their figures dancing between the doors as they moved. Carla reached forwards, gently putting her arm against Ruth’s, pulling her from her thoughts. She turned back to the food, brows knitting, “wait, no, let me guess.”

Carla Murphy laughed, turning back to the kitchen island as she begun working through the vegetables. Ruth frowned, analysing the different ingredients and items around before turning to her mother with a triumphant smile. She smacked her fist against the palm of her hand as she spoke, “Ratatouille!”

“We have a winner,” Carla exclaimed, knife moving smoothly through the zucchini as she sliced it. “We’ve made this before, do you remember what to do, Ruth?”

Ruth nodded, settling in beside her mother. She tucked a strand of her short hair behind her ear as she picked up the knife. It moved smoothly through the vegetables as her mother turned on some music, humming along to the tune as she was lost in her process. The feel of the knife in her hand was at odds with the training embedded into her muscles. She hated the way it felt natural to shift her grip into a hold that would change the knife from an instrument to a weapon. Part of her hoped that by the time her name was safe from the reaping that she could outwear the lethality aged into her bones. She wanted to grow past the markings of a career, she didn’t want to be defined by that role.