The Hunger Games: Fight To Survive (HTTYD/Animation Crossover AU)

A Moment To Myself

July 4th was, and will always be, the second worst day of the year. The first goes to The Hunger Games itself. The Reaping was the day that sent excessive dread among all 12 to 18 years old. Apart from those in the Career Districts, who trained for their whole lives, waiting for a chance to potentially volunteer themselves to a live death match of 24 tributes, and to be the last one standing.

The moment someone turned 12, their name would be added to be picked randomly. One male and one female tribute from each District. For each year, one more is added until they turned 18. Being 15, my name would have been placed in four times by now. Instead, for this year, it was six due to Tesserae.

By signing up for Tesserae, the Capitol would supply one person a year's worth of grain and oil, in exchange for an addition name to be placed for The Reaping. District 7 wasn't the poorest District, compared to 11 or 12, but it wasn't no way near as rich as 1 or 2.

Dad was struggling with food this year, even with him working in lumbering. He'd never told me, but I wasn't blind, I could tell. So, wanting to help, I decided to sign up for the two of us. He wasn't ecstatic when he found out. Furious was the right word, and while I understood why, there was no other choice in my opinion. That didn't stop the heated argument happening that night.

Regardless, the damage was done for the long run and now my name was in The Reaping more times than the average 15-year-old. Just the thought of that contributed to my desire not to attend, but I couldn't. It was basically the law to go, to the point where school and work were closed to enforce this, like it was a holiday for everyone. A holiday to see whether someone you knew would most likely never come back.

Nevertheless, overthinking this was doing no favours to my current state. It was just one day, and if I wasn't pick today like the last three years, I'd never had to think about it again. Until the next year. I wasn't one for feeling optimistic, but I guess The Reaping did that to me. As for overthinking, that was always a regular occurrence.

After changing out into just barely comfortable clothes, I headed downstairs with Toothless in my arms. The kitchen came to view, where I found Dad sitting at the dinner table. Even with the usual creaking of the stairs, that didn't draw his attention away from eating his breakfast and reading from a piece of paper intensely.

"Morning, Dad." He eventually turned his head towards me once I spoke.

"Oh, morning, son." He replied. "How was your night?"

I shrugged. "Could've been better." I didn't delve deeper into the reason and thankfully, he didn't pry, simply nodding in response and continuing with his business. Dad was aware of my panic attacks, but not much so about my nightmares. I never liked disclosing about them. I'd rather have it stay in the back burner, like it never happened.

"I made some rice porridge. It's in the pot on the stove." He mentioned.

"Cool. Thanks." I placed Toothless down next to his cat bowl, headed for the bottom cupboard and found the bag of cat food. Once I filled up the bowl, Toothless immediately began munching away. I chuckled, giving him a quick scratch on his head before making my way to dish myself a small portion of the rice porridge.

Upon sitting down opposite Dad, we ate in silence, only giving each other brief glances on occasion. This wasn't anything new. We weren't quite chatty during breakfast. Actually, we weren't chatty in general. But it was always on The Reaping where I could hear the pin drop in the distance. Like there wasn't anything we could say to soften the impact of today.

I took note of the paper Dad was reading, and desperate to say anything and break the silence, even for a moment, I pointed it out. "What's that?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's, uh... the new plans." He eventually said. "For the station."