You don't get to be a victor for nothing.
It takes a certain lust for life, a certain need to live.
But everyone was dead.
He could get past Maysilee. He'd gotten past worst, before.
But his mother, his siblings, his friends?
Each in quick succession, the Capitol shooting them down with their handy shotgun of convenient accidents.
And the people knew, of course, with some kind of animal instinct that he'd been marked, that to speak to him was danger, to get close was doom.
He'd been a prince, and his legacy had been a bowl of worms, strife, grief, and death.
Simultaneous and entwining, lightning fast, to leave him bereft and fade just as quickly, leaving him grasping into air.
It was gone.
He was gone.
He just wanted to forget.
That was what the liquor was, really. It wasn't really an addiction, it was amnesia.
Sweet Mnemosyne who had charmed the awful bowels of the river lethe, where memory still lived, in forbidden breath. The current of remembrance flowed towards him, and beyond.
Only to be swept back just as quickly.
It tantalized him.
And in each gap between one swig and the next, a whole eternity passed, where he remembered.
No need to live again what is past and gone but not over.
And each tribute that died was another of the thousand dying suns, that flitted and fluttered, but never stayed! Never stayed to warm his old, old, bones, until he found that he loathed what he craved, loathed so that he need not live it again.
Not that that worked.
But he kept on living.
He didn't know why.
It was a sad half-life, barren of glory of happiness or sun.
Life as a piece in a game.
But it was life.
And he was a victor, after all.
Erm. . . I know this is dark and sort of weird, but well then! Hope you have enjoyed! Review!