Chapter 1: Enobaria Golding
Victor of: 62nd Hunger Games
Hometown: District 2
Enobaria sank her shovel into the dirt. The earth came up with some resistance, but she tossed it over her shoulder like it was paper anyway. She had a complicated association with the concept of resistance - both despising it and then welcoming it at certain points in her life.
She was the last living Career Victor in all of Panem. This gave her a special status, and people would always notice her by her teeth that ended in golden fangs. She had had them cosmetically altered when she won her first Games, after ripping out her final opponent's throat out with her incisors. For the next thirteen years, she had basked in the glory of her district and the Capitol, as any tribute who loved the Hunger Games should.
But then, she was conscripted to participate in a fight to the death all over again.
When former Victors were reaped for the 75th Hunger Games, or 3rd Quarter Quell, Enobaria's faith in the Capitol was shaken. She felt betrayed. Not Brutus, though, her district partner that year. He had volunteered enthusiastically, expressing how he couldn't wait to get back into the arena. This made Enobaria see the man who had been her mentor in a whole new light.
She couldn't kill him. They were friends. Perhaps it had been a favor, then, to watch from the shadows as Brutus met his end at the hands of Old Abernathy's boy - the last tribute to die in any Hunger Games, ever, it would turn out.
Surviving the arena a second time had been Enobaria's plan all along. She just had not expected to do so with five others. Captured by the Capitol, she was treated like a guest rather than a prisoner. Even so, that did not prevent her from bearing witness to what Snow and his goons did to Axe Girl and Lover Boy. Watching fellow Victors tortured like that - the boy was driven nearly insane - made her not just question the Capitol. She renounced them.
To declare this disownment openly would have meant her death, however, so Enobaria bided her time, waiting for an opportunity. It came when the rebels extracted Axe Girl, Lover Boy and Odair's Mistress from the Training Center. Enobaria slipped away in the confusion, stowing away on a hovercraft that spirited her back to District 2, which was now in full revolt.
Only when amongst neighbors and friends did she throw her lot in with the rebels.
The defection was made all the easier thanks to rebel commander and fellow Victor, Lyme. Pity she did not make it. Enobaria kept her head down, blending in within the forces. Once Snow was captured and Coin took over and called for a Council of all surviving Victors did she reveal herself. Enobaria was first and foremost a survivor, always had been. If people thought it was self-serving because of where she came from or because she was a Career, then tough shit.
Returning to District 2 after the war, Enobaria set to work rebuilding the Nut that she and the other rebels had destroyed. It was the project she oversaw and was hard at work on now, as she now swung a pick into the bedrock.
"All right, boys! Let's move on out that cart of shale!" she called over the hum of machinery and clinking and clanking.
Exalted Victor down to humble miner... maybe the latter was a life she could be proud of.