District Nine – Male – 28th Hunger Games

In conclusion, I want to express my gratitude to the Capitol for their generosity. As a new Victor, I had no idea how much they would care for my family—

"I don't have a family."

"Oh," Lucilla sprays macaron crumbs, "it's just for show. A general expression of thanks."

"Yeah," he says, flipping through the twenty-five cards Lucilla shoved into his hands that morning, "Because we're all the same."

"If it bothers you, just change the word to 'friends'. You have some of those, surely," sensing his foul temper readying to strike, Lucilla moves to a nearby decanter and pours him two fingers. He drinks it; of course he does. "But really my dear, you must learn to let these things just roll off. It's not worth all this drama."

"Sure. The Capitol hates drama."

"You are lucky I managed to entice any sponsors at all, the way you behaved to the press!" she snaps, crocodile tears shining to rival the heavy mascara shellacked on her eyelashes. "I don't know why you do this to me, Maran. Everything is a battle with you."

He throws the glass and it shatters against the train's bulletproof windows. Lucilla squeals and throws both hands over her ridiculous sea-foam wig. As if a single shard could find its way around the towering heap of polyester curls.

The temptation to violence lies so close to the surface that his skin simmers with it. Flay her with the cheese knife. Drown her in bourbon. Feed her cake until the strapped-down waddles of her stomach burst like grenades.

Sponsors love that. Anyone can bash brains in with a rock or pierce hearts with a spear. But he had made himself an artist of death, and they had begged him for more.

Maran knows Victors like him, smoldering ruins that burn themselves out raging against the past, unfit to be seen, locked away in institutions. Bogeymen too fierce for the delicate sensibilities of Panem. He's balanced on the edge; falling is only a matter of time.

Lucilla peers at him through her fingers, but her fear is only playacting. She doesn't believe he'll hurt her; why would she? But he wants to; his hands tremble with the urge.

Blunt the edges. A swallow of whiskey isn't enough, but the bottle might be. He sweeps if off the table, carafes breaking in a waterfall of crystal and wine. Lucilla yelps, but she has the good sense not to twitter at him just then.

He stalks to his bedroom. The door's automated and won't give him the satisfaction of a slam, so he upends the side tables, tears the comforter from his bed, rips the curtains from the windows. It's not enough; he's still ticking.

Whiskey helps. Two, three, four swallows; he drinks until he's out of air, breathes, gasps, drinks again. Ten minutes later the liquor lands in his empty stomach and he reels, too uncoordinated to keep shredding the goose-down pillows.

He sprawls crosswise on the exposed box spring, watching the ceiling swing in lazy circles. The frantic tempo of his thoughts slows to something manageable, soap bubbles drifting up from the bath. One in particular floats just before his face and magnifies.

Gratitude. He's not grateful; the Games have destroyed who he was and left a monster waiting to burst through his veins. The Capitol hasn't cared for him; hadn't cared for him. And now they want to set him up on a pedestal and praise him for something he isn't.

Grateful. Loved. Human.

Something Lucilla said tugs at him, insistent despite the fog of whiskey. What is it?

Change the words.


He's still hungover by the time they arrive in Twelve, and nothing about the District—from the oily reek in the air to the hangdog expressions of the people—does anything to ease his headache. He'd killed the girl from Twelve in one of his first forays into...well, the horrors that came later. It still haunts him, the way her teeth split her tongue when he'd hanged her.

Maran can tell that it haunts Twelve, too.

So it's a heavy atmosphere of sullen silence that greets him after the mandatory applause. He clears his throat, hands shaking as he pulls the cards from his pocket. The words are scrambled and uncertain, but he remembers the sense of righteous justice that filled him when he wrote, and he speaks from that.

"You want to kill me. If I could, I'd let you do it."

They don't startle, too tired, too numbed to suffering that it takes another few sentences for his words to sink in. Even the Peacekeepers don't react.

"What I did in the Games is unforgivable, and I won't ask you to forgive me. The Games may have made me kill those people, but the choice..." he can't cry, he needs to get this out quickly before anyone thinks to stop him, "the choice to...do what I did was mine."

Now they're listening. He sees shock and confusion, but more than that, there's rage. He understands.

"I became a monster so that I could survive. It was the only way I could see to do it. I needed sponsors, and they liked what I did. I'm sorry."

He sees the lead cameraman cut the feed and, satisfied, allows Lucilla to drag him backwards off the stage.

"What are you thinking?" she squeals, trembling. "Do you have any idea what they'll do to us?"

"It doesn't matter."

A smile is unfamiliar on his face, but it feels right.

The victor from District Nine died during the Victory Tour.

He committed suicide by hanging.

The Victory Tour was canceled and a Retrospective of the Games was broadcast in its place.