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The Chaperone
Effie Trinket became a chaperone for the Hunger Games because her mother had been a chaperone for the Hunger Games, and her mother before her. If Effie had been allowed to chose for herself, she might have become a dancer. Or maybe a stylist. Such things weren't allowed, though, so she swallowed her dreams and set herself to the task of being the best chaperone Panem had ever seen, even if it meant suffering the shame of being a third generation chaperone assigned to District 12 - because her mother made the near fatal error of engaging in a torrid love affair with a Gamemaker who fell out of favor.
She'd chaperoned three years worth of tributes to the Hunger Games before Katniss Everdeen volunteered to take her sister's place. When Peeta Mellark announced his decade long crush on the girl, Effie had been beside herself. Half of her, the romantic dreamer, was heartbroken that such a love story would never been able to play out as there could only be one winner. The other half of her, the practical pragmatist, knew that such was life and there wasn't much that could be done.
Haymitch Abernathy's plan to sell the pair as the Star-Crossed Lovers From District 12 not only to Effie's fellow Capitol citizens but to the Gamemakers themselves seemed dangerous in the extreme and futile in the obvious. Effie went along with it, though, because she was a romantic dreamer at heart and she wanted very much to see something good come from it all - even if it meant working more closely with the drunk mentor from District 12 than she ever had before.
When the plan worked, Effie was torn between being terrified and being elated.
She settled on terrified when President Snow read the card for the Third Quarter Quell.
What she felt when Katniss shot the arrow at the dome of the arena, a dome she'd never even considered might exist at all, was something beyond terror. It still had a sort of definition, but it was beyond terror. The definition disappeared when she discovered that, had she been with Haymitch at the moment rather than in the ladies' restroom, things would have turned out very differently. He was gone, disappeared into thin air, and she was arrested by President Snow's personal security team for collaborating with a rebellion she hadn't known existed.
Her mother's affair continued to be only near fatal, even for Effie, and she was simply imprisoned for the duration of the war. She was told she would face trial for treason when District 13 was defeated again, when the Mockingjay was dead, and when the glory that was Panem was solidified once again under the control of Coriolanus Snow.
They said it was simple.
It wasn't.
Her cell was next to those occupied by the victors and, although she never saw them and they didn't know she was there, she heard Peeta and Johanna Mason scream and she knew she would never forget the tortured sounds as long as she lived.
The war ended, but not the way she'd been assured it would end.
District 13 wasn't defeated again. The Mockingjay wasn't dead. Coriolanus Snow was a prisoner.
But Effie faced trial for the role she'd played in shepherding ten tributes, because the rebels counted Katniss and Peeta twice for their two trips, to almost certain death in the Hunger Games. It wasn't a charge of treason, but she faced execution nonetheless. A part of her, the practical pragmatist, believed execution was too good for her. The romantic dreamer part of Effie Trinket was dead, destroyed forever when Haymitch and Plutarch Heavensbee worked together to free her from the people they were allied with.
It wasn't them saving her that killed what hope her spirit still held. The end had begun when she heard Peeta, a boy she cared about when she shouldn't have, scream in agony and beg for death. The end sped up when Beetee, and she knew it was him, hacked the Capitol news feed and she saw Katniss outside the bombed hospital full of innocents. The end slowed to a painful crawl when the feed was hacked again and she listened both to the sounds of a rebel squad rescuing what was left of the victors and to the sound of Finnick Odair laying bare every secret he knew about the people she'd always accepted as the good, upstanding people of Panem.
When her cell door was unlocked by a woman in a District 13 military uniform who told her where to go to clean herself up and then where to find a rebel commander who would give her an assignment, she resolved to do everything she could to make amends for the part she played in it all and then to live no more. Somehow, she wasn't surprised when she was told to prepare the schedule, and the Mockingjay, for the execution of Coriolanus Snow.
There was no doubt on the day of the execution that Katniss Everdeen did not remotely resemble the terrified but confident girl who took her sister's place that day that seemed so long ago.
Effie couldn't help but wonder if her own eyes looked half as vacant as the Mockingjay's.
Nothing surprised her anymore, not even when Katniss sent her sole arrow firmly into the chest of the new president of Panem. She knew nothing about the woman but if Katniss didn't like so fiercely, Effie was in full support of her death. And, while Haymitch went with the guards carrying away the newest assassin in Panem, Effie found herself beside Peeta - whose hand was bleeding in the arc of Katniss' teeth where she'd bit him instead of what Effie quickly found out had been a nightlock pill.
She hurried him to a guarded room in the Presidential Mansion where he wouldn't be bothered until he could be taken back to the hospital where Dr. Aurelius, Effie's childhood sweetheart, was working to undo what the tracker jacker hijacking had done.
Peeta begged her to stay with him.
So she stayed.
She slept on a chair in the waiting area at the end of the hall opposite where his room was. She let herself be evaluated by Dr. Aurelius to make sure she meant Peeta no harm, and it was the very last thing she meant for him, and she was given permission to escort him to his therapies and to have meals with him if he wanted - and he almost always did.
They didn't talk about life in the Capitol or what happened in the Hunger Games or in the war. Peeta talked about the second two of those with Dr. Aurelius and for him an extended stay in the Capitol was nothing more than a step toward going home. Instead, Effie asked him to tell her about life in District 12 - not necessarily his family unless he wanted to talk about that, but about the day-to-day things that every citizen faced. She wanted to know what it was she'd been wilfully and ignorantly ignoring for her entire life so she heard his vivid descriptions of the starving children and the parents who found the strength to smile and play and love after twelve hours in a coal mine.
She didn't ask Peeta's forgiveness and he didn't offer it.
But when she told him she was only trying to make amends for what she'd been a part of, he told her she was wrong. He told her the point of it all, even if he hadn't always known what was going on, was to make a world where everyone could live in peace and hope - even those who had been duped for a lifetime. He told it was wrong to make life a punishment and that the best way to make amends would be to live very differently from how she had before.
Effie knew he was right and she vowed to take her life into her own hands, for once, and live the way she wanted.
Peeta said he was proud of her and that he'd help in any way he could so long as she helped him in any way she could.
It wasn't a hard promise to make.
Chaperoning were what she knew and it was easy enough to change the reason for it.