Foreword
In the sixty-five years since their inception, I have watched every Victor win the crown. But I have yet to see someone truly escape the arena.
In the decades since the beginning of the bloodshed spectacle, dozens of children, fists clenched around swords and knives and arrows, have fallen beneath the remnants of their own humanity. But a select few, the unlucky ones, walked in as children, only to return clutching onto their spared lives as murderers. They are named Victors. The irony incites a bitterness in some, but honestly, most have no will left in them to care, because every single Victor eventually learns a simple truth:
The Games are not the end.
It's something that stays with them for life, tainting their subconscious; clawing at their insides. They say that nobody decent ever wins the Games, and it's true. It doesn't matter who they were before the reaping; if they were kind, a noble soul, or endlessly selfless. The arena changes them. If they manage to come out alive, they are no longer an individual. They become Victors. They are everything the Capitol glorifies. They are somebody who managed to beat the odds and come out above their opponents, who braved bloodshed and war. Somebody worthy of being draped in luxury. Somebody lucky enough to be reaped. Lucky enough to survive.
Lucky enough to learn that victory isn't all they make it out to be.
Nobody emerges unscathed. There are many who can look into a camera, smiling a perfect smile and partaking in interviews with glee, but even they aren't spared. What you don't see are the dark circles and red-rimmed eyes left by their nightmares, expertly hidden behind carefully applied makeup and a practiced facade. The knives tucked under pillows, a bitter comfort necessary for sleep. The lamps that burn until sunrise, without which the shadows coalesce into murderous figures and the silence blends into oaths of blood and vengeance. The images of their final adversaries found everywhere and nowhere all at once, with weapons in hand and eyes that scream of desperation.
For them, victory isn't being the last one standing. It's the unspoken thank you in the air during their district's Parcel Day. It's sleeping through the night without a scream drowning in their throat. It's waking up to a radiant sun and a beautiful day that is natural and real, not manufactured for a picturesque arena. It's a hopeless dream that continues to be crushed every day.
Each Victor has a story, and while not all the stories are worth telling, all of them are worth listening to.
In my district, I am known as the one who tells of myths and miracles, a keeper of tales, if you will. With these pages I intend to tell the stories of the Victors, their legacies and their experiences. An attempt to collect their memories before those too are lost to corruption.
It will be a tribute, a final tribute, to those who played and lost the Game.
They deserve that much, at least.
Someday, maybe in a better world, someone will understand the ones who made it out, the Games they played, and the price they paid.
After all, the Victors are the ones who truly lose the Hunger Games.
-The Storyteller
The 65th Year of the Hunger Games
We don't own the Hunger Games.
AN: Welcome to our tribute to the Victors, The Games We Play! And thanks so much for reading the start of our first project ever on Fanfiction! As mentioned, this will be a collection of stories from every Victor, you'll see when we start with the very first next chapter.
-Kintsugade and embriumm