Coriolanus Snow was on the run.

He had finally snapped and bolted from his station as an Enforcer. He had not wanted the job-- he had been forced into enlisting by the Dean of the Capitol Academy after evidence had surfaced that he had assisted Lucy Gray in cheating to win the 10th Annual Hunger Games.

His gorgeous white curls had been buzzed, his name stripped of his newly-won prestige, and he became Gent to his fellow Enforcers, left to loll miserably in Sector Twelve. Training was brutal, the food was terrible, and he ached for the meager comforts of home.

Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore.

He packed a knapsack with a change of clothes, whatever scraps from dinner he could scrounge, and the gun and knife he had been issued as part of his uniform and gear. Slipping past the guards, he had intended on to making a break for the woods. However, as soon as he touched the fence, an alarm was raised.

Coryo scaled the fence, cutting up his hands in the process, panic clawing at his chest. He stumbled hard, nearly going down, and dashed across the stretch of open ground that he had to risk before making it to the sanctuary of the trees. He felt the searing pain of the bullet tearing through his side before he heard the shot ring out. A cry was wrenched from his throat, and he again nearly fell.

He ran as he never had before, sliding into the treeline like a baseball player on the plate, and then began to lope deeper in. He felt hot blood soaking his side, the pain dizzying, but he pushed forward anyway. He would not go back.

It might have been minutes or hours before the sun was rising and he had to find shelter. Spotting a ramshackle hut of a house just beyond a rusted wire fence that cut off District 12 from the forest, he instantly swerved in its direction.

He managed to wriggle beneath a loose corner of the fence, staggering upright.

Only to be met with the wide eyes of a boy/girl about his own age, dressed in ragged District clothes, standing before him.

Well, shit.