Of Flint and Tinder

The origin of the symbol of the freedom fighters. Or, five people who ignited the world without meaning to, and the one who saw it coming.

Disclaimer: I don't own Hunger Games. If I did, it wouldn't be half as good as Mrs. Collins made it. ;)

Madge Undersee was no simpleton. She had long known that her father got secret messages from other Districts, and from a young age had burned with curiosity each time he locked himself in his study to the sound of those curious warning beeps. Many times, she had (unsuccessfully) attempted to eavesdrop at his door, but could only catch the muffled tones of several voices before her father – or the maid, or her mother – caught her and carried her off with a disapproving rebuke.

By her eighth birthday, she had all but given up on the mystery when, as luck would have it, she broke her arm.

Though pitifully small compared to most district Mayor's houses, her home was far larger than any other place in District Twelve, large enough to afford a small child many hours of exploration in the little-used cellars and closets. She had wandered into one of her favorite rooms, the impressive dining hall that was far too large to be used by their small family. One wall had a large, though grimy, window so that the room was always light, even without the often-scarce oil for the lamps (Contrary to whatever that Gale boy may say, the Mayor and his family were not bathed in luxury by any means, and they had to deal with shortages just like everyone else).

A noise had distracted her from tracing the admirably carved dining table (Supposedly hand-made from a prominent carver from District Seven, though that might have been one of the many yarns her father told her). It was strange and garbled, rather like hearing with your ears submerged in water. At first, Madge thought a bird had gotten into the house. She wandered about the room. There, the noise was coming from the top of the bookshelf. She pounded her fist on the wood, but it did not seem to startle the bird.

Madge bit her lip nervously. Perhaps it had a broken wing? What if it was stuck up there and needed help? Resolutely, she began to climb, intent on bringing it to the apothecary. She reached higher and higher until the noise became clear.

It was not a bird. In fact, she could hear clearly now that it was a man's voice.

"—strict Four, the storms will likely continue for the rest of the season. The Capitol will receive the usual shipments, but do not expect other districts to get many shrimp this year." Her father's study! The air vent must lead directly to the room. She was so surprised that she lost her grip and fell to the ground with a yelp.

For years after that, she sanctioned the dining room as her study area – it was not entirely a lie, for the dining hall was out of the way of the rest of the house and the perfect place to study for the more difficult areas of her schoolwork – and shut herself in an hour before the scheduled updates usually started, before climbing up the bookshelf and listening in.

One day, as she was listening she was startled by a bird's call. It was a mockingjay's strong, confident cry. She looked automatically to the window, but saw nothing. With a start, she realized that the TV in the Mayor's study was still going. She listened in awe, for it was none other than the Valley Song, and she recognized the robust tone the bird was mimicking as none other than Katniss's father. The song was not uncommon to hear around the district, for it was well known that the mockingjays loved mimicking the bright man. The gruff, no-nonsense report of the news official broke the spell, carrying in clipped tones the news from District Eleven. Eleven. Her district's lullaby had travelled through the woods from mockingjay to mockingjay, over hills and forests, carrying Katniss's father all the way to District Eleven.

For the first time, Madge felt a connection to the other Districts, felt the fledgling beginnings of a bond deeper and more personal than the one forced on them through the Hunger Games. The muttations, from the jabberjays to the tracker jackers, were a problem that every district knew and had to deal with. While she couldn't understand the various subtleties of fishing, and a man from District Seven would likely never grasp the many dangers of coal mining, the mockingjays brought them all together.

From that day on, if you asked one Madge Undersee her favorite animal, she would answer every time, the mockingjay.

It was a meaningless doodle, really, done with half a mind while he was trying to pay attention to the heavily censored, government-approved version of the Dark Days, the rebellion that had given rise to the yearly torture known as the Hunger Games. The drawing was one of hundreds that served to distract him from the suspicious truths and obvious lies in the brainwashing. Somehow, though, the doodle caught the attention of one Madge Undersee, sitting next to him and looking just as bored. She even leaned over to get a closer look, which ended in the teacher calling them both out and landing them in detention.

It was a picture of the Meadow, with the run-down fence leaning ominously in front. He had been trying to master the swirling shadows the leaves made on the ground in the afternoon, which had turned into trying to perfect the minute shapes of the leaves shooting out of the delicate branches, which had turned into a ten-minute attempt at drawing a mockingjay. Every trace of his pencil seemed to fix one problem and create another – a perfectly drawn wing out of proportion with the bird's head, or a carefully crafted eye peering too intelligently out of the bird's otherwise simple face. With a frustrated scowl, he had looked up to find Madge staring at him in amazement. At her wordless request of permission, he slid the paper closer to her desk so she could see his handiwork.

The wings were still out of proportion, he could see from this angle, but from Madge's face it could very well have been as real as a photograph, hanging with honor in the rich Capitol hallways they saw on TV.

When she asked shyly if he would draw another for her, he found he didn't mind detention all that much, even if his mother did give him hell for it.

Of all the District Mayors, Everard Undersee probably had the least amount of pull with the Capitol, for good reason. If the inexcusably lenient mayor of an out-of-the-way District that only hosted one pathetic champion wanted to commission a birthday gift for his daughter, the Capitol official receiving the request would inevitably scoff at the humble missive and reply with an entirely insincere apology, citing that the proposed trinket would require a craftsman from District One to make, and, of course, direct contact with another District was quite impossible under the laws of Panem.

Still, Mayor Undersee was not a man to be denied the chance of doting on his only daughter. He sent letters to every official in Capitol City, their District escort in the Hunger Games, and, when inevitably, all of his requests were turned down, resorted to an act of cunning that few would have thought possible of the affable man.

Haymitch Abernathy regarded the mayor with open surprise when the small folded square of paper was placed determinedly in his hands. Opening the coal-stained paper (Nothing was entirely clean in District 12, not even, apparently, the Mayor's store of drawing paper), he frowned blearily at the sketch of a mockingjay, wings flared imperiously with an arrow in its mouth, encircled by a thick band.

"What's this?"

"Madge had it in her room. The baker's boy drew it for her, apparently." The mayor never broke eye contact, which was slightly unnerving, so he looked nervously back at the drawing. It was done well enough, he supposed, and the feathers in the wings looked almost disturbingly real. The bird could almost fly off the page.

His head hurt, partly from the hangover and partly from trying to figure the Mayor's intent, so he sighed irritably and let out a semi-polite "Well, what am I supposed to do with it?"

"I – " here, the large man faltered slightly, looking out of sorts. "I wanted her to have a birthday present. I wasn't sure what to get her, but… Well, she asked me if she could pin it to her wall, or find a picture frame for it, and…"

"So you want a picture frame?" Haymitch tried to wrap his head around why he would be able to help with this, but the raging hangover made that almost impossible.

The Mayor shifted nervously. "I wanted to make a locket for her. Or a brooch, perhaps. She doesn't have much in the way of jewelry, and you should see how she lights up when she plays with her mother's tarnished old ring."

Suddenly, everything lined up with startling clarity. The Mayor wanted jewelry, which meant fine metals, which qualified as a luxury good. That meant District One. Haymitch scowled at the man. Why hadn't he just bloody said so?

"I'll ask Cashmere. She's more bound to listen than the other victors from One." The Mayor's face morphed from hesitant concern into one of joy and gratitude. With a grunt, Haymitch clapped him on the shoulder. "In payment, why don't you round me up a bottle of white liquor? I seem to have offended Ripper earlier this morning, and she won't give me a drop. There's a good man."

The champion that year had been from District One, naturally, providing Haymitch the perfect opportunity to visit with the former champion. The Victory Tour always started with District Twelve, and after the correct amount of grumbling (A favor between victors could not look like it was gladly done, after all, especially when you were from District One) the new victor's mentor, Cashmere, took the grimy drawing with an air of disdain and reluctantly promised to finish it by the next Hunger Games.

It is true that all victors are expected to find a talent, usually unrelated to the profession most prevalent in their home district. Cashmere, however, had always found peace in making the delicate jewelry her district was known for, and her business found no want of customers, all clamoring for fashions crafted by the alluring champion.

Before the Games, the hobby would have been a fatal distraction. Now, however, there was no trainer to disapprove of her jewelry, and she was glad for the brief moments of tranquility it gave her. Before the fateful Games that crowned her champion, her life had been a constant, chaotic training session.

The other districts call them Careers, and heavy disapproval taints the word. They probably don't realize how accurate they are. The first few months of her victory found her startling awake in the dead of night, waiting for the ambush that always haunted her mornings. It took nearly a year to get used to the idea that there were no fighters lurking in the corner looking to slit her throat in the hopes of earning a spot in the top echelon of trainees. Only a handful ranked high enough to earn the right to volunteer for the glory of the Games.

After surviving the brutal training academy of District One, the Hunger Games is just another day.

The pendant Haymitch wanted is far simpler than the ornate pieces for the Capitol that are the basis of her career; a simple mockingjay enclosed in a circle. The drawing that the design was to be based on was rather more detailed than she could make it in the gold foil, almost lifelike in the delicate shape and pattern of the feathers. She wondered briefly who had drawn it, and baffled customers that often came to watch her work asked who on earth would want to wear such a thing.

Inhabitants of District One never gave much thought to the pesky birds. Most regarded the mockingjays as a harmless nuisance, to be ignored until they got into grain stores. But Cashmere understood their usefulness in a way the others in her district would never fully grasp. Everyone knew the story of the jabberjays, of course, and most everyone in District One believed their descendants to be worse than useless. They could no longer recreate human speech, so how could they possibly be of any use?

This is what Cashmere had been told by her father, and she had ignored them along with everyone else until one fateful day just outside her house, where she'd been hiding from the other trainees in the academy. She was slender for her age, and could climb faster than most of the others, so when one boy had gotten lucky enough to slice her arm with a dagger while they were in line to buy meat, she had run directly for the tallest tree in sight and scurried up it, jumping from there to the roof and skirting the skyline to her home.

Finally, when she could run no farther, she stopped, checking her arm. Not serious, but it was a downright stupid mistake, one that could have cost her life. She froze at the sound of whispering. A group of trainees, no doubt, planning their attack. She peered around the roof, but only saw a bedraggled looking mockingjay gazing at her with what could only be described as annoyance. A group of boys scoured the street below her, but she was far from the edge and they'd never see her from this angle.

There was a loud, bright laugh, this time directly behind her. She whirled around, heart racing, only to find the same mockingjay behind her, obviously unhappy at being ignored. She was about to dismiss it again when it opened its beak, and that same strange whisper from before sounded again.

Cashmere had stared at the bird in amazement, a plan already forming in her mind.

After that, she had used the grubby bird as a decoy, talking to him for hours so he could learn her voice and then placing him in a quiet place to lure a trainee hoping for an easy kill. Her ranking at the academy had soared, earning her one of the highest kill counts in the history of the academy (There were not supposed to be true killings, of course, but the object of the training was to leave your victim weak enough that you could remove their Kill Token, which counted as a death).

Then one night, a good friend, Starlight, had bled to death after losing her Kill Token, and Cashmere had wandered onto the roof looking for peace.

She found the most exquisite choir performance she could remember going to. The song was unfamiliar, but it had a peaceful quality to it, soft and sweet like a lullaby. The mockingjays were all echoing each other, so that the song repeated itself and skipped phrases, but the rich, lively tones they sang in made her smile with rapture and delight.

A deafening crack shot out from the street below, making her jump and the mockingjays fall silent. "And keep quiet, you mangy birds!" Came the familiar holler of her neighbor. He slammed the door with a sharp smack, and one mockingjay, the very same that had started her winning streak, imitated the inflection of his voice, all the way down to the crack of the slamming door. Cashmere had to giggle at the little bird's insolent retort, which was as wounded and vain as a rebellious teenager. The bird ruffled its feathers irritably, its pride obviously irreparably wounded until she started stroking his feathers affectionately.

Thinking back on that moment, Cashmere carefully formed the golden bird's eyes and beak, trying to capture that irritated air of her songbird. She tried to capture his refusal to be ignored in their first meeting, the reluctant acceptance of his part in her plan, the affronted disdain at the man who had dared to interrupt his singing. Lost in her fond memories, she was surprised when she came back to herself to find the pendant finished. The bird exuded that same noble pride in every inch of its tiny frame. She smiled. The work made her soul sing with pride.

And some years later, when she watched an impossibly thin girl from District Twelve with a wicked bow arm and a slightly implausible love story pull out a handful of poisoned berries, she couldn't stop the smile from forming when her proud, rebellious face mirrored exactly the shining pendant she wore.

Cinna stood in front of the dress, eyes narrowing as he tried to control the anger coursing through him. By direct orders of President Snow, Katniss's dress for the tribute's interview had already been decided on. The wedding dress was truly beautiful, with ornate patterns of real pearls sewn into the dress. It glimmered in the sunlight streaming through his window.

The Rebels wanted a mockingjay. Snow wanted a tragic example to break the other Districts. The other victors wanted a defiant message for throwing them back to the wolves. And the stupid, shallow, idiotic Capitol wanted their girl on fire.

Cinna cocked his head at the thought, the anger slowly replaced by steady, cold purpose. Perhaps… perhaps, he could give the crowd some of these things. He regarded the dress one more time. It could not look like it had been tampered with, at least not until the time was right. Real fire, then, and a burnable cloth on top that sat like silk. Katniss might be in trouble, though, if he's using real fire. But a heat-risistent layer, just under the true design would take care of that easily enough, and if her arms are out of the way, it just might work.

He smiled. He would give the Capitol their girl on fire. And nothing screams defiance like lighting the symbol of Rebellion up in the middle of a national broadcast. Especially, he mused, a broadcast meant to show the Capitol's strength and superiority. And as for a tragic example…

Well, now. He'd have to talk to Peeta about that one.