this is the reform of the victors
The Third Quarter Quell wipes out an entire generation of soldiers. The Revolution steals many more from the front lines (and, somewhat ingloriously, the back). The Capitol orders genocide – a final purge of all those within its grasp. A trail of hollow eyed cowards is left in its wake; one of the few remaining testaments to a world where murderers are revered. This is the aftereffects of a life lived bathed in blood – this is the reform of the victors.
(They do not explode in a blaze of glory or a shower of sparks.) they whimper, and they die.
(the fallen have no place among the free.)
Katniss Everdeen
The Girl on Fire. The Saviour, as they come to call her. Leader of the Rebellion (let's just forget Cinna and Coin and Gale and Plutarch and all the others, shall we?). They want her to be President. They want her to reform their world, to cut down the old and make way for the new. To nurture a civilisation.
But she's only seventeen and a murderer. War is easy. Peace is hard.
She lives a quiet life in District Twelve and disappears.
Peeta Mellark
The Boy with the Bread. It's such a mundane title, isn't it? It's perfectly fitting for the blonde boy who dreams of rainbows and freedom and wakes to a world where blood rains from the heavens (sometimes he wonders if heaven and hell switched places while no-one was looking, if the red sky and the haunting moon and the Capitol's seal are signs of the devil and the cool wet earth where caskets are buried is the only salvation.) Sometimes, he falters. But Peeta Mellark was never made for fireworks or grand explosions or great impacts. He holds Katniss's hand and doesn't mind being burnt.
He is the Boy with the Bread and he's all too used to suffering.
He opens a bakery and remains mundane.
Johanna Mason
She's terrified of water so she finds a house in District Four and learns to swim. She's that kind of person.
(And it's a mere coincidence that she's only two doors down from Annie and her son and ends up living half of her life watching the little boy grow up and keeping Annie in reality. She can't shake the feeling that she owes Finnick at least this.)
It's not enough. Johanna, for all her razor sarcasm and sneering frost, wakes to the sound of her own sobbing each night. She cracks and shatters across the Capital-smooth marble floor.
There was never any hope for her.
Beetee
He goes back to District Thirteen, back to Coin's crumbling empire, back to where it all began.
Beetee does not believe in the actions of one single person - because as much as Katniss is the face of the revolution she is not the catalyst, she is not the hero. The unlucky sector of holy Capital country was their salvation and for that he is thankful. One person cannot singlehandedly start a war or win a war. He thanks the whole of District Thirteen by building, by creating; by bring new things into the world.
He invents the new empire but never takes the credit. One lone man cannot influence an entire nation (he's always used explanations as excuses). He chooses to be forgotten for he knows all too well how history can distort the truth.
Annie Cresta
She's the sanest of all of them. Funny, isn't it, how madness reveals the truth? But Annie is smart (unstable) so she plays pretend and covers her ears and screamsandscreamsandscreams. They leave her alone.
Society smudges her name from the infamous tally and shuns her. She is the only victor who truly wins: innocent.
(Tell you a secret: she's mad underneath all the play pretend and fake laughter and wide eyes. Double bluff. Fooled you.)
Enobaria
District Two is in ruin when she returns with re-capped fanged teeth and a ferocious, burning need for vengeance of an indescribable sort. Katniss's failure has taught Enobaria an invaluable lesson – fighting and killing and causing pain will bring you no closure.
She builds District Two from the ground up again, puts out the fires and stamps out the prejudice. Training centres and mock arena complexes and weapon manufacturing plants are replaced by schools and rows of housing and hospitals.
(She burns the Justice Building to the ground; old habits die hard.)
Her proudest achievement? Not a single person in her District owns a gun (or a machete or an axe or a set of bows and arrows or anything else of that description.) No weapons.
And yet she's murdered six children and countless adults in war games.
Take that.
Haymitch Abernathy
What did you expect?