Homecoming
a Hunger Games fan fiction
by Technomad
A lot of people envy us.
We who've won the Hunger Games seem to have a pretty good life.
We don't have to work, we can buy what we want, our houses in the Victors' Village are better than any others in our District save only the Peacekeepers' and other officials' homes…there are good things about it, I won't deny.
But there are also things I'd give anything, including my status as a Hunger Games victor and my easy life, to not have to deal with.
For one thing, one of the few real duties we winners do have is mentoring our district's annual Tributes in every Hunger Games. We travel with them to the Capitol, we coach them, we tell them, as best we can, what to expect…and we get to know them as people, as individuals.
Most of our district's Tributes are volunteers. We have, like some other districts, a sub-rosa training program in place, to provide a pool of qualified people to offer themselves in the place of a designee who's clearly not up to the challenges to be faced in the Arena. And we victors' usual job is to mentor them.
By the time we go to the Capitol, we've often known our Tributes for some years. To us, they're people. That makes watching the Games, which we, like everybody else, have to do, much more difficult. When those vultures in the Capitol just see a spectacular play, we often see someone we've worked with, someone we know, someone we feel responsible for, dying.
And the question that I cannot escape is always: Did that happen due to some failure or shortcoming of mine?
And I never have an answer. Not that that stops the question from keeping me awake, in the long watches of the night.
But even that's not the most difficult thing that I have to face.
After the Games, the Tributes are returned to their home districts. The winners, of course, come home to heroes' welcomes. When I won, the party that greeted me when I stepped off the train from the Capitol staggered me; I'd spent much of my life in the training program, where excesses simply were not allowed. I ate and drank more in that party than I'd ever done before. Not to mention other things.
But the losers come home too. And here, they're greeted by the victors.
Oh, we attend the funeral or funerals. Everybody does. It's often hard to keep ourselves under control, to offer proper condolences to families, to maintain dignity and not collapse sobbing and blaming ourselves.
But before that, there's the homecoming party. That is private…it's exclusive to us. Nobody else is allowed in, since they would never really understand.
At my homecoming party, I was introduced to the ritual that we winners all follow. The coffin with my fellow tribute in it was met at the train station by a group of victors, who solemnly carried it into the big hall in the Victor's Village where we have these events.
The coffin was opened, and each of the previous victors went up to it, introduced him- or herself, and solemnly apologized to my companion, taking full responsibility and assuring my companion that the blame was entirely theirs.
Then the party began, and all through the night, no matter how wild the drinking, dancing, music and lovemaking got, the coffin remained there, with my companion as a silent attendee, witnessing all that went on.
We do that every year.
It's our way of apologizing to our trainees for their deaths.
And it's something I would give anything to avoid having to do.
END
