The thing he remembers most clearly about winning is the sense of loneliness. The blur of being pulled from the arena, giving final interviews, receiving congratulations from a million people he never met. He couldn't wait to get home, where the loneliness would end.
Except the loneliness followed him home.
He spent his first month in isolation, his only company the haunting ghosts of the family he no longer had. And when he eventually picked himself up long enough to wander into town, the loneliness followed him still.
The comforting haunts he used to sneak away to with his girl were nothing but foreign lands now. The familiar faces of the community, now just strangers watching him from the shadows.
When he fell asleep that night, the first time with a bottle in one hand and a knife in the other, he dreamed of the arena. And when the grinning faces of the other tributes stood over his crumpled and bleeding form, he smiled. Because somewhere far away his little brother, his mother, and his girl were still alive to cry for him.