Written for Starvation's monthly challenge! Prompt: "What don't you understand? I won." I also like reviews :DD
Delilah walks off of the train. She's smiling, her face is dazzling, and she feels good inside. Delilah has just won the Hunger Games and she is home to District Six.
Capitol reporters flash their cameras in her face. Soon they will leave her alone, but for now, she was OK with being in the limelight. She was a Victor after all.
The reporters question her and she answers willingly. Her mentor rolls his eyes and guides her away with his strong hands.
Then Delilah gasps. She sees her brother. Her only family left. The only one who she cares about. Dylan.
Dylan smiles and runs to her. They embrace in hug. Capitol cameras catch all of this.
"Dylan! I-i-i.. I missed you," she says meekly.
"I missed you, too, Delilah. Promise you'll never leave me again," he says.
"I promise," she says, and they lock pinkies.
Her mentor pulls her out of the crowd and they walk to her home. Her new one in the Victor's Village. Her mentor is the only other one who lives there with her now. All of Delilah and Dylan's things have been moved into the new house.
"I'll leave you to settle in," her mentor says.
She nods.
Delilah runs into the house. The walls are made of bricks and the floors are made of wood. She and Dylan were poor and had very little but she sees gifts for them: A couch, a better television, baskets of food, money from the Capitol, and many new clothes. She sighs at all the fortune she has.
"Hey there, Delilah," Dylan says as he walks in.
She turns and smiles at him, "Look at all these wonderful things we've been brought!"
Dylan nods in agreement.
"I'm hungry," Dylan says and they dig into a basket of food.
~.~
Delilah sits in her studio, her painting studio. She converted her room to it because of her love of painting. She sleeps on a couch in there now. Her face is covered in colors as are her clothes. She's mixing a blue and a red, looking for some purple.
Dylan walks in. The Victory Tour starts next week and she's barely ready. Of course, like all the Victors she'll show off a hobby which will be painting. Dylan likes to paint, too, but Delilah is very passionate about it.
He watches her as she paints a scene from her Games. It's one he knows well. It's the one on the second day she was in the Hellhole, her arena was a rain forest, filled with animal horrors waiting to attack you. The picture turns to reality as he remembers watching her on the television.
Dylan sits on the floor, watching the television in their small house. They have nothing to sit on but the floor.
He sees Delilah on the screen, she's walking through the rain forest. It's very wet and he can see her face dripping with sweat; her feet crunch on the leaves. She's looking for water, desperately. She needs it to survive.
Delilah looks up. She sees a strange species of purple birds. The birds are fat and have small, stubby beaks. She smiles up at them.
"Know where any water is?" she asks the birds. She doesn't expect any response, but she has no one else to ask either.
The birds just stare at her, sitting, watching, doing nothing. Delilah stares back up at them. They get bored and begin to fly away. Delilah follows there slow pace. The massive trees that form a blanket from the sun guard them from leaving the rainforest.
The birds fly faster so Delilah runs. She's chasing them for about 3 minutes, when they come into a clearing. The birds go down to the pond and start to slurp. Delilah rubs her eyes, she can't believe it. Some fat purple birds just saved her life in the arena.
She paints the scene vigorously, the birds sipping the water, her hands cupping it. It's her only haven in the arena.
"Nice painting, Sis," Dylan says.
Delilah continues to paint but responds, "Thanks."
"The Victory Tour is coming up," he remarks.
She nods.
"You ready for that?" he asks.
She stops painting. She responds, a little broken, "I don't know Dylan. I just don't know. How will I be able to handle seeing the families and pictures of the ones I killed?"
Dylan ponders it for a minute and responds encouragingly, "You're a tough chic. You'll get through it."
~.~
Delilah's back home. The tour is over. She's in her house in the Victor's Village all alone. Dylan's out with some friends.
Delilah shouts and screams and pulls her hair. She's going mad. Now she's crying. She can't take it anymore. The torment. The nightmares that haunt her of the children she killed, their death a weight on her shoulders.
Maybe I should just kill myself she thinks There would be no more nightmares, no more torment. I would be free.
She's kicking chairs over and screaming again. Why is her Victory turning bittersweet? Dylan said she was tough, she'd be fine. She's nothing close to fine.
Delilah runs into her painting studio. When she paints, she can let all her emotions out. She paints pictures of her, the monster she thinks she is, killing all of the tributes she did. It's horrible and she sobs all over it. Painting isn't enough to heal her.
Delilah knows one thing, one thing that can send her off into a world where there are no deaths or killing. No Games. Morphling.
She grabs her coat and rushes to the factory on the other side of town. The bad side, the side she grew up on.
She charges into the factory, slaps down some money and demands as much morphling she can pay for. The hand her six boxes full of the drug.
Delilah arrives home and Dylan still isn't there. Good. She doesn't want him to see her like this.
She takes the drug and all her feelings become happy. She's on her fifth dosage when Dylan comes home.
"Delilah?" he calls.
"In here," she responds groggily.
He runs in the painting studio. His eyes flash to the boxes of morphling.
"Oh no, Delilah. No," he says.
She stares a him.
"You can't have turned to morphling," he says.
"I did," she mutters.
"Why? I don't understand!" he asks desperately.
"What don't you understand? I won," she says.
"What does this have to do with you winning?' he questions.
"I won. I won the Games. This is what happens to the winners. Shouldn't you know? You've seen them all. You've seen them fall apart. Don't tell me you don't understand. I'm weak. I can't take the pressure of killing those innocent people! I turn to morphling. I'm weak," she says.
"No! You're not weak! Delilah? Delilah don't do this to yourself!" Dylan yells.
She waves him off with her hand.
"It's just a game.." she murmurs. "All I did was win a silly little game..."