The Price of Peace (Finnick Odair)

Alone in District 4

The strong salty air filled Evadine Ripley's lungs as her toes sunk deeper into the tide-soaked sand. 

She remembered longing to see the ocean in her first life, a prisoner of foliage who never got to experience the peace of the beach. 

Walking further into the water Evadine smiled to herself as she felt the water pull at her legs, beckoning her farther in only to push her away again a moment later.

She loved the peace she felt in her new life. It was sad to think that her life in District Four was a much more pleasant one than her previous life. 

It didn't take long for Evadine to figure out where she was after her death. Between the District Four posters, the Capitol propaganda, and the fact that the fifty-second annual Hunger Games was announced a few days after her birth into this new life, her new world was pretty easy to deduce. 

The real trouble was coming to terms with the fact that she was dead and then born again into a fictional universe that publicized the slaughter of children to avoid rebellion. 

At first, she was terrified, but as she settled into life in Panem, she couldn't help but embrace her second chance at life.

She let her hair grow long, unlike the buzzcut John would force her to wear. She wore the most colorful clothes she could find, never being able to wear them before because it was easy to spot her. She still woke up before the sun, out of habit but she wouldn't get up immediately, she would wait for the morning light out of spite. 

She promised herself that she would be happy in this life and that she would not live in fear.

When you've already faced death, everything else seems insignificant. Fear fades and in the absence of fear, there is only peace. 

Her family in this life held no significance to her. Her mother in this life died a year after her birth, leaving her daughter solely in the hands of her absentee father.

Her father, Eryn Ripley, disappeared sometime after Evadine turned six. She never got a definitive answer as to where he went. Some neighbors whispered he escaped the district, some say the peacekeepers killed him, or that he was buried at sea. As cold-hearted as she felt, she never thought much of her father's disappearance, she was more than capable of caring for herself. 

Evadine usually stayed on her own, still unaccustomed to strangers even years after she died in the woods. Occasionally she would give some of her hunted food away to poorer families. She still lived in the Ripley's home so shelter was never a problem. She also had developed a potentially detrimental habit of endearing the peacekeepers. 

All of the capitol's puppets knew of the sweet curly-haired girl who would occasionally bring them flowers or weave them friendship bracelets out of yarn. 

One time she learned that the Peace keeper's Captain had a guitar and by some miracle, she convinced him to let her play songs for the peacekeepers on Sundays. Captain Nash was an older man, stern and often rude, but even he found himself charmed by the little orphan.  

After she began her Sunday concerts at the peacekeepers' base, she noticed that their patrol route shifted so that every hour or so one would walk by the house of the lonely little girl, just to make sure she was alright. 

She got in trouble a few times for distracting her peacekeeper 'friends' while they were on duty. Well, she referred to them as friends, she suspected they viewed her more as a stray kitten they all collectively decided to adopt. They always gave in to her distractions even when they were on patrol. She had been pulled into Captain Nash's office more than once for doing so, but he usually let her go after a stern talking to.