"Victor Affairs passed this on to me this morning," Nero says, handing Lyme an envelope.
Lyme takes it, frowning. Nero says the Victors get together every month to have a signing party, where they autograph birthday cards and photographs and t-shirts or whatever else, concoct canned responses to fanmail deemed important enough that VA doesn't handle it themselves, and trade gifts amongst themselves. Lyme hasn't been to one yet, since fresh Victors in Two aren't expected to respond to anything in the first year, so maybe she doesn't know the details, but it does seem a bit weird to get something out of order like that.
Her mentor only gives her a mysterious smile and gestures for her to open it.
It's already been opened, of course, examined by Victor Affairs to make sure there's nothing threatening or inappropriate, and Lyme slides her finger under the flap and lifts it. (She only briefly considers catching the pad of her finger on the edge, which could either mean she's getting better or her brain knows that paper cuts are a bitch even to someone who's taken a sword to the thigh.)
Inside is a folded piece of paper and a photograph, the latter of which slides out and falls to the floor. Lyme picks it up, then nearly flings it away from her in horror; it's a picture of a girl, maybe Centre age maybe not, grinning up at the camera with gaps in her teeth.
"Why the hell are people sending me pictures of kids?" Lyme demands, holding the photo away from her between two fingers.
Nero rolls his eyes, takes the picture and turns it around to face her. "Look at it, then read the letter, girl."
Lyme does, though not before giving him some serious side-eye. It is a girl, she's pretty sure, despite the cropped-short hair and boy's shirt and pants that are too big for her, and the grin is wide and happy, the stance open with feet planted apart and arms crossed. "Okay," she says. Nero takes the picture away and gestures at the letter.
The letter is not from the kid, thank Snow, because Lyme isn't sure she could take deciphering charmingly misspelled words and backwards letters and whatever else makes people coo at kids' writing for reasons she'll never understand. It's from the girl's mother, as it turns out, probably from the merchant sector judging by the handwriting.
Dear Ms. Lyme,
I want to thank you for being an inspiration to my daughter. Tessa has had trouble with other children ever since starting school. She's never liked wearing dresses and hates having long hair, but her classmates would tease her any time she tried anything different. For the last year I've hardly seen her smile.
Then, last summer, Tessa saw the Victory Broadcast and demanded to know who you were. After we explained, she immediately ran to her brother's room and came out wearing some of his clothes, and she demanded that I cut her hair that night. The next day at school, she told me that the children tried to tease her as usual, but she told them to be quiet because Lyme has short hair and doesn't wear dresses and she won the Hunger Games and no one is allowed to make fun of her.
Since then there have been no more incidents. Tessa still dresses in boy's clothes and keeps her hair short, and she even badgered me for a photograph to put up in her room. I can't explain the changes in her since seeing you on television, and if ever we miss a broadcast with you in it, I hear about it when she finds out. She never misses a program if she can help it.
She's too young yet to understand the sacrifices you made, but Tessa knows that you're our Victor and that makes you a hero. When she's old enough I will explain to her so that she can appreciate you even more.
Thank you for helping my little girl smile again.
Martha Cutter
Lyme stares at the letter for a long time, turning it over in her hands. For a minute she freezes as her brain flies back and forth between folding it up and handing it back to Nero or crumpling it up and throwing it far away from her. Her heart takes up a rapid rhythm in her chest, and her breath catches and presses out until it feels as though her lungs are going to explode.
"Hey," Nero says, moving like he wants to put a hand on the back of her neck before thinking better of it. The last time he did that without warning Lyme snapped and nearly broke two of his fingers. He touches her arm instead, ushers her toward the couch. "Talk to me. Tell me what you're thinking."
"She's —" Lyme swallows, tries to take a deep breath, then finally gives up and leans ever so slightly into Nero's space, giving him permission to put an arm around her. "I'm not ready for this. I won the Games and I'm going to mentor and I'm ready for all that, but not — this. Not kids thinking I'm a hero and growing up wanting to be like me."
Nero runs his fingers through her hair, soothing, and it's such a gentle touch from the giant hands that smashed in half a dozen skulls that it snaps Lyme out of it, just for a second. "Tell you a secret, little girl, you'll never be ready for that. It never stops being weird."
"It's not just weird," Lyme says, and she lets the paper fall into her lap so she can press her hands over her eyes. "They don't — they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know who they're worshiping."
The girl in the photograph, the mother who penned the letter, they're in awe of the girl on stage, carefully crafted and moulded with every single moment, every word and look and gesture, planned and approved by someone else. They see Lyme the Victor, triumphant and proud and representing all the glory of District 2 with just the right amount of defiance.
They don't see Lyme scratching at her wrists and staring at the blood oozing up from the ragged welts. They don't see her crying out in pain when the skin grafts stretched and Nero rubbed ointment on her calves. They don't see Nero with her foot in his lap, tweezing out bits of broken glass after Lyme dropped a cup and stepped on it because she wanted to feel something.
They saw the moment of Lyme's victory, that final fight in the sun, but they didn't see her exhaustion, the depth of how little Lyme cared — about Two, or glory, or the Capitol, about anything that was supposed to matter. How much she wanted a glass of water with ice cubes clinking against the side, cold and fresh, not the lukewarm trickles from the last of her canteen, dripping into her mouth as she tilted it back as far as it would go.
How she looked at the final remaining tribute and her mind fragmented — how she saw a boy with a life and a family and a favourite food and the same wild desperation to go home, then blinked and a second later saw nothing but a walking, breathing obstacle to getting out of here — how the two images shifted into one another in the few seconds before she raised her sword and it didn't matter anymore.
They see the Victor, the hero, and the blood and sweat that went into the victory but not the tears and vomit that came after. If they saw her now Lyme doubts anyone would be writing her thank you letters.
"No, they don't," Nero says, and Lyme didn't say any of that out loud but he must have caught some of it, or maybe he's had similar thoughts himself. No one who cheered for Nero's victory would have imagined the sight of him dwarfing Callista's couch with four sleeping cats piled all over him. "But that's part of our job. If everyone knew what it's like, no one would ever send their kids. We're here to keep up the illusion."
An illusion that Lyme swallowed without ever questioning, no matter how smart she thought she was because her patriotism was mostly for show. Train hard, fight hard, pass the tests and make your kills and win the Games, come home to a mansion and a lifetime of no one being able to hurt her ever again. Lyme had rage as deep as an ocean and a child's lifetime of revenge to make up for; she'd seen her victory as the final step and not looked behind, and the Centre played her every bit as much as they did the ones who faithfully recited the pledge without irony.
If she'd known, going in, what it would feel like on the other side, would she have bothered? The answer is yes, most probably, and Lyme isn't sure what that says about her.
"I guess it's working," Lyme says, leaning a little closer into Nero's side. One day the smiling girl in that photograph will learn what being a Victor means; whether she still calls Lyme her hero and tries to dress and look like her, well, who knows. Either way she'll never know what Lyme paid to get here, and that's the way it has to be.
Nero says nothing, just keeps his arm around her, and Lyme focuses on her breathing and slowing down her heart. There's something else like a splinter under her thumbnail, and if Lyme pushes too hard it slips away. She counts her breaths and stares at a patch of sunlight on the wall, allowing the thought to work its way back, until finally she catches it.
It's even more stupid than she thought, but Nero hasn't laughed at her yet. Lyme reaches over, takes the photograph and smoothes it out with her thumbs. "I kind of hate her," she says, and Nero stills but doesn't interrupt. "She has a mom who buys her the clothes she wants and lets her cut her hair and run around pretending to be me. It's not fair!" The pressure builds up inside her head and finally breaks through her eyes, and Lyme curses and digs her knuckle into the corner of her eye socket. "I worked for everything I got, nobody handed me anything. When I cut my hair I got thrashed so hard I could barely walk after. Why should she just get what I fought for without even trying?"
Nero's arm tightens around her, though not enough to set her off, and he rests his chin on the top of her head. "Because of you," he says, bringing his other arm up in a loose hug. "People like us, we sacrifice so other people don't have to, and that doesn't always mean the Games. Sometimes it means little girls who want to look like you get to look like you without walking through all the shit you did. It's not fair, but it is good."
There's not much Lyme can say to that, but the bursting feeling in her skull finally passes and her eyes quit betraying her. She scrubs a hand over her face and wipes it on her pants, and Nero stays at her side, steady and solid. "That's probably not what you meant to do when you brought me that," Lyme says.
Nero chuckles. "No," he admits. "I wanted to show you that you make a difference. That it's about more than just killing tributes or trying to save our own. It's a big world out there, little girl, and there are good parts to it."
Lyme lets out a breath. "I should write back, probably."
"You don't have to. People in the Capitol might expect replies when they write, but Twos understand. It will be enough for her to send it and know you read it."
Lyme slips the note and photo back into the envelope and hands everything to Nero, who puts it away in a pocket. "Maybe later," she says. Right now it's all too raw; there are no words inside her fit for a mother or a kid to hear.
Nero nods, and finally Lyme pulls away. "Can we spar?" she asks, and Nero smiles and stands up.