First of all, I don't own Hunger Games or it's characters. This is just a plot bunny I had to get out :)
This is my first Hunger Games fanfic ever! I just wanted to write about how twisted The Capitol is and kinda do a character study at the same time. If I messed anything in plot or details up, I apologize!
It's been awhile since I actually wrote a story, I hope you enjoy :)
The Capitol does not tolerate defiance. It does not take kindly to being made a fool of. And, those who do either, or on special occasions, both, are punished in the cruelest ways imaginable. That is the capitol: cruelty, greed and malice. It kills so many people a year, whether in an arena, a subterranean torture chamber or the children who simply drop dead from starvation. Oh yes, the Capitol kills, there is no doubt of that. The odd thing, the circumstance that resides in the bleak grayness of uncertainty, is when the Capitol kills someone and they continue to survive and breathe. This form of death is probably the most favored by The Capitol, because remember they are cruel and relish the idea of prolonged misery, especially for their own entertainment.
Haymitch, through his time in the Arena, had silently and stealthily defied the Capitol, but he did not receive his death for this, oh no. It was after he had killed twenty-three other Tributes, children… sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, and had been received as a Victor that his trouble began. They do not tell you, no one on Earth had told him! How could they do this to him? He had won, why couldn't he just go home and try to forget? Remember, the Capitol is cruel and loves to watch the lesser, smaller, weaker people suffer, they barely view them as people at all. What had they not told him? Once named a Victor, this person gains a sort of celebrity status that isn't really theirs to begin with, and they begin to be coveted and craved. How could people do this? Had he not done enough? Suffered enough? Now Snow wanted to auction off his body for some Capitol upper echelon pig to use for their pleasure.
The practice of selling off a Victor's company to the highest bidder is one of those 'don't ask, don't tell' practices of the Capitol, they have so many really, they must have script writers on call around the clock. Snow wanted to sell off Haymitch especially, he was young, virile and brutal, people would sell houses to possess him for the night, an Avox gages oddly when he hears The President discussing this, he's from District 12, he grew up with Haymitch, please, dear god don't let it happen… Silently, how else could he possibly be? They took his tongue! Silently, this Avox searches the Victor's quarters for Haymitch, to warn him, to get him out!
It is hard for a mute man to explain such horrors to a shell-shocked one, but the message finally translates and Haymitch is now the one struck dumb. How could they? He's thought that a lot lately… The RedHeaded Avox that he knows, he has to know, because nobody could possibly risk the wrath of the Capitol for someone they don't even know, could they? Is leading him down secret passages and slips through walls that must be made out of nothingness to the Victor's train, devoid of cameras and lies. "You have to leave now!" The Avox's eyes scream, and the train is ready to leave but it can't be this easy. Of course not, not with the Capitol, there will be repercussions, he knows there will be. At least he will die whole.
Die whole, to later reflect on that thought will leave him bitter and gulping down more burning hot white liquor, they took him APART for god's sake. As soon as he arrived home, he knew that something had gone horribly, terribly, irreparably wrong, and that he should have stayed in the Capitol, stayed and suffered alone, because alone then is better than alone now. The mayor was never a large man, even the well fed here sometimes look just as emaciated, our entire genetics have changed because of the hunger, but now he seems so imposing because Haymitch knows he can't bear good news, perhaps there is no good news left in his small corner of the world anymore. The Mayor waits, pauses on the words he can't even believe himself, The Capitol is kicking a dog that is already down.
Dead, they are all dead. Gone. Obliterated. Decimated. Wiped off of this cruel world and they were all he had left. The wind smells like liquor and tears and it makes The Mayor feel like a prophet for a moment before he shakes his head and swallows the lump in his throat and really looks at the boy, man in front of him. Haymitch looks dead. He has stopped moving, talking, he's barely breathing anymore, he doesn't even blink. His mother, father, sister, brothers, aunts and uncles, a lover or three , someone who was a little too nice to him by Capitol standards, all dead, inexplicable so, a freak accident here, a random virus with a fever that boils here, all just gone. Even The Mayor knows it is not random, it all revolves around Haymitch, he is the epicenter of death. This is his punishment for not letting them have his body all over again, to break him down for their pleasure, even if it's a different pleasure. How could they?
Sometime, as the sun begins to sink, The Mayor leaves, leaves Haymitch just standing in the square, staring at some point so far in the distance and maybe in time that nobody can rouse him for three whole days. He is like a zombie once he finally moves, stiff and inarticulate, and he can only think to do one thing. Kill the pain. To kill the memories themselves until there is nothing left to mourn because he will have no memory of good things, they do not exist, because remember, The Capitol is cruel. So, Haymitch drinks, pints, quarts, gallons, until he feels like he's drowning, then he realizes that he still has sensation, so he chugs another bottle. They may not have killed him in the arena, but he is surely dead now, his body just hasn't caught up with his heart and soul, there is too much feeling, he can't stand it. Every Games, it gets worse, because no matter what, everything has the opposite effect on him, why in the hell can't the feeling just stop?
He has sent so many kids off to die, he doesn't train, how can he? Because maybe it's better to die in the Arena, in glorious battle, than live under some pompous pink haired, silver tattooed lover. This thought makes him feel sick, he let them die, how could he? Maybe that's what they have made him, turned him into, some over-feeling, baby sacrificing mutt instead of just dead, because the dead can't possibly feel this much, can they? He's done horrible things, but, so has everyone now, there is no purity, except her and she really isn't all that pure either, but she is brave and of the earth, and he loves her in a way that scares him because he is feeling and she doesn't feel and he is jealous. Perhaps, it better put that she doesn't feel anymore, because she used to, there is no other explanation for her rash and self-sacrificing actions other than she feels so much, maybe too much. They will break her of that, she will learn.
Learning implies teaching, what can she learn from a teacher who doesn't even know how he wakes up every afternoon. Why didn't they just kill him? She knows what they have done to him; they will do it to her, surely. She has far too much feeling, more than her mentor or anyone, because she feels and accepts and uses it to bring the masses up in arms and greet her with compassion and revolution on their lips. This wisp, his wisp of a girl, has changed an entire nation with her feeling, so much feeling, why does his feeling hurt? He can't be alive, he simply can't. Because good things do not happen to dead people and she is good and he is dead. There is a heaven then, even for horrid, utterly dead people who get entire families killed. He'd drink to that.
Review? ;)