This fic is for Sam (MissingMommy) in the Year of Gift Giving Extravaganza. Enjoy! :)
You drink too much.
That's a fact that you know clearer than your own name, sometimes. The whispers are always there, of course. Did you hear the story of Haymitch Abernathy, the sole remaining District Twelve Victor of the Hunger Games? He won the second Quarter Quell. And what an achievement, for a boy from District Twelve to win; surely he should be proud, arrogant, on top of everything?
And perhaps you are proud. Of course you're proud. And arrogant doesn't even begin to cover it. But on top of everything? Hardly. Half the time you don't know what's going on; it's either drink-induced visions or the nightmares that tear at you, that leave you screaming for the children who died over twenty years ago, and you can't really decide which is worse. Perhaps you're crazy. That would be a suitable explanation.
But there's another part of you that thinks you're just scared. Out of the arena, and yet still scared because it's not meant to be how it is. The world shouldn't be dependent on the Hunger Games, you shouldn't have to have made the choice of kill or be killed at the mere age of sixteen. And there are younger ones too—twelve year olds, holding a weapon the way others their age may be allowed to hold a doll. And when you're alone at night, trying to fight off sleep in order to ward off the nightmares, you think of how unfair life is, how you're stuck as a bitter, jaded drunk when there are people out there who never have a second where they're not smiling, never have a reason to cry. The people in the Capitol make you sick.
Maybe you would be okay if you could just forget about the Hunger Games, pretend you were never in them, pretend you haven't killed innocent people, watched an ally die and held her hand while everything that ever was her just left. Or if you could pretend that you didn't return home to a slaughtered family. But you can't because it's constantly there, every day of your life, reminding you that you are a killer. And that people you loved are dead because of you. Because you were too smart for them, and you're not supposed to outsmart the Capitol. And you should have known. But you didn't and that's what has proved to you that the Capitol always win, that maybe they allow one child to leave the arena each year but they're not really alive when they exit, not really. They're not the person they were before and the Capitol know that all too well. The sick bastards. They know.
Every year you are forced to mentor kids that you know will die. They're half-dead from starvation, or rich enough that they've never had to fight against anything in their life. They don't stand a chance against the other tributes, not even for a second. You know that the only reason you survived is because you were clever enough, and lucky enough. But the tributes you mentor have nothing, absolutely nothing going for them and you know that they're going to die.
You're not really sure when you completely give up. Somewhere along the line, after watching kids die, year after year, screaming for their families, or for some sort of God or higher force to save them, to take away the pain, you give up. You can't just build up your hope and get to know them, know that they are people who are alive and worth saving but there's nothing you can do—there's never been anything you can do. And it's not okay—that's the massive fucking problem that the Capitol just don't realise. It's not okay. Children are dying. And you may have been able to outlast forty-seven other children but out in the real world you are nothing.
The children you mentor are scared. And maybe it would be better if you told them you're scared too, that you're still scared after twenty years. But you can't seem weak, and so you brush it off with reckless bravado and you tell them in no uncertain terms that they're as good as dead. And you laugh. And you drink. And you eat. And you repeat that cycle every year and you could almost get used to it if it didn't hurt so much.
You're doing them a favour. It's better that they don't survive—being murdered in the arena is less painful than living for years after with the guilt of what you've done. Kill or be killed. Fight or take flight. Those are the only real choices in the arena—the only ones that matter, anyway. And you've made those choices and you've re-lived those choices every night in your dreams since you were crowned Victor.
And you will re-live those choices in your dreams until the day you die.
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