A/N: I'm really pleased with this one, too.
He plays his role so well that sometimes he forgets he's just acting. The smiles get a little too genuine, the flickers of emotion more spontaneous than they should be. He has to consciously remind himself to not get attached to any of these children, that within a matter of weeks, all but one will be dead. He knows he'll break a thousand times over if he starts to care. So he drowns himself in garish dyes and laughs with an audience about things they couldn't possibly understand and swallows whatever shards of humanity manage to escape. It almost works.