Canary in the Coalmine

THIS IS NOT MY STORY, I TAKE NO CREDIT!

"She traces the timer on her wrist without even thinking about it. It's not counting. Of course, it's not counting. She zeroed out at midnight - the official start of her husband's eighteenth birthday. Her sister stayed up with her, wanting to be there to see the numbers end. Maybe it's a nervous habit now. It's supposed to be comforting. Or at least, it used to be comforting, when she was smaller and the numbers were bigger. They had seemed infinite.

For the last week - or month or year, depending on how you look at it - she's only been made nervous by the numbers. Not that worrying helps."

In Panem AU where marriages are controlled by the government and everything else is left for the couple to figure out by themselves.