Here is the Mentor chapter! Not every Mentor is mentioned but the majority are, I hope you enjoy!
Cashmere misses mentoring with her brother.
Sure, Augustus was OK, if a bit boisterous for her tastes, but Gloss and her were inseparable. If she and Augustus now were a well oiled machine, her and Gloss were unstoppable. Every Tribute they mentored entered the Top Eight, until Augustus won, and One hasn't seen a Victor in the near ten years since.
Of course, due to the twelve Districts, one winner every twelve years should be around average, but that's ignoring the prestigious reputation of One and it's training academies. Cashmere remembers her time in the Hippolyta Institute as one of her finest memories, back when she was all too naive to the injustices of the world.
Now she sees the corruption around every corner, the pain the families hide in manufactured excitement that their child is off to kill and die. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees their faces. Every child she's killed, either with her own two hands in the arena, or those she's sent off to her death ever since.
This year, all that really changes is that they're younger.
—
Julius can still see them in the corner of his eye.
The little twelve year old girl he killed in the Bloodbath. That boy from Three, who was so kind to him in training. And the boy from Four, who was a scared child under his trained killed visage, and really so was Julius.
Each one of them, their head beat in with a brick or a club. He hears their screams and cries every night, as he locks himself in his room so the Capitol can never see he's so weak. Every night Honoria comes in to comfort him.
He doesn't know if he could have survived without her.
He sits in her arms like he's a scared little boy and she his mother, and counts the seconds before he's forced to go through it all over again.
—
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
Wiress sits alone in her home in the Victors Village, listening to the sound of the clock in the dark. It's patterns are rhythmic and always play the same time they should. The clocks always operate on a routine, and Wiress likes that.
Her home is the only place that's safe. It's always empty, quiet and dark. Whenever things change, they're changes she allows. It's consistent and wonderful, and the only place that's happy ever since Wiress stepped foot in the Arena.
The doctors said that she was always broken, even before the Games, but Wiress doesn't believe it. She always used to count the seconds to the ticking beat of the clock. In the Arena, it kept her sane. Her token was a wristwatch and she still wears it with her everywhere.
Whenever anything gets too much, you can always focus on the constant tick, tock from it.
—
Annie's crying again.
It's not all that uncommon, in her less lucid moments, but it still hurts every time. Finnick holds her closer, whispers more words of comfort in her ears, tells her everything is alright and the Games are over and hopes she can understand it, and it's helping her.
He honestly can't blame her. What she went through in the Arena could traumatise anyone. She and her brother were Reaped together, and he was killed in front of her eyes. They'd run off from the Career pack, and when they found the near catatonic Annie, they very nearly killed her before the Gamemakers raised the water levels with an earthquake to allow for some suspense.
Annie is the only Victor who ever won without killing a single person, yet she's probably the least stable of all of them. She always had some layer of dreamlike reality clouding her vision. She laughed at jokes no one else heard, covered her ears to hide the non-existing screaming, and sometimes had moments where she forgot she was safe, she was out of the Arena, she survived.
Many would say Finnick was an idiot for loving her. Finnick would say they were wrong.
—
Astra can still feel the chill running through her fingers, as clear as it was in the Arena.
It was a cold, barren landscape spreading for what felt like forever. There weren't any landmarks to guide the way, and walking anywhere felt like wandering aimlessly. So she set up camp with Jessica, her ally from District Seven.
Those were the days she tried to remember. Spending hours by the fire talking to Jessica, it was easy to forget she was in a death game, and not just on some frozen adventure with her best friend. What comes after is what she tries to forget.
The pack of bear mutts that chased them to the Cornucopia. The Careers- two boys from One and Two- stabbing Jessica. Her screams of agony as she slowly died. The Careers deciding since she was a short, frail looking girl, they'd be more memorable if they killed her slowly. All her fears of what pain she'd experience running through her head, especially with all the sick things she'd heard them say to all the girls at the Training Centre. Her picking up a mallet and hitting them again and again and again until screams filled the air and her body was coated in blood.
Astra was never the same cheerful girl after that day.
—
Jacob will never let the Capitol control him.
Sure, they can force him to appear at their silly parties, sell him to the highest bidder or force him to send more children to die, but they'll never control his mind.
Not by fear, like the Victors rather affectionately referred to as the Morphlings, so terrified to remember that they drowned their sorrows in drugs and each other. Not by glory, like Mercedes, the woman he's unfortunately sharing mentorship with, who seems to have been born with the views of a filthy Career.
Jacob has lived by the sword, and if necessary, he'll die by it.
—-
Johanna is fed up.
Of life, of Panem, of the Games, of everything. Not a single day of her goddamn life has gone right since the day she exited her mother's womb. When she was Reaped, she was happy for the first time in her life. She was free, she thought. The second she made her first kill, any sense of joy was taken away.
And things only seemed like they went from bad to worse. The few people she ever loved were killed when she refused to whore herself out- her little sister, her girlfriend. And when she cared about her tributes, they died too. Best to just stay bitter and cruel than friendly and in pain.
She's only giving the world what it gave her.
—
Calicio can't even remember his own Games.
He's the oldest Mentor, nearly seventy, and he's one of the few that were able to forget. He'd took a nasty head blow during the final battle, and ever since then he'd never been able to think right.
He watches the tapes for his game every few months, to try and remember who he is. Every time he cries. He cries when the two twelve year olds are brutally killed by the Careers, when he's just barely unable to save his allies life, when he sees the blow that made him like this, and sees the blood pouring from his head.
He knows most Victors would give anything to forget, but he just wants to remember. It feels like watching someone on a screen, not himself. He was so different, intelligent, calculated, so unlike himself now.
If it's taught him anything, it's that being ruthless is the only way to win. His compassion cost him his mind, and he was lucky.
—-
If Maisie's learnt anything from the Games, it's that violence should be avoided at all costs.
Violence only brings pain and suffering. It was necessary then, but ever since she won, she hadn't touched a hair on anyone's head. She's even become a vegetarian.
None would guess she had such a high kill count in her games- six kills, three in the bloodbath. She didn't mean to- she'd shoved someone onto a faulty landmine that failed to deactivate, which blew them and everyone around the same area sky high.
She's set up memorials for each of her victims. Honouring their name, their bravery, their kindness, whatever she can find and remember about them. They deserved a peaceful life.
Maybe one day, the children of Panem will get one.
—
Billy forgets his Games by living life to the fullest.
He knows everyone in Ten, most by name. He spends his days when he's not working drinking, and his evenings out with another pretty boy each night. He's happy in those moments.
When the distractions disappear, that's when he remembers. So he minimises the chances no distractions will appear. A bookcase full of books and a bottle of whisky in his room, the phone numbers to all of his "boyfriends", a house next door to Taura Bonney.
She says he never matured past a teenager, he says she's never learnt how to enjoy things. She says he'll die of liver failure one day, he says she'll die of boredom. He loves her.
Not love-loves, of course. Neither of them have the eyes for the opposite gender. But the two of them were as close friends as anyone could ask for.
They'd need it for the upcoming days.
—
Rue spends most of her days down at Chaff's house.
Not all day, of course. She has her family, she's got school. But she always spends an hour or two with the older Victor to share her thoughts.
They might seem an odd pair to some, but Chaff is the only one who really understands the pain she goes through whenever she closes her eyes. It's a shared thing amongst the Victors, she guesses, but Chaff is one of the few living Victors in Eleven. There's Seeder, of course, but outside of that the Victors Village was very empty.
Maybe after her first mentoring experience, it won't be.
—-
Haymitch wonders who will mentor after he dies.
It's not a rhetorical question, really. He's surrounded by empty liquor bottles and is well aware of the fact he'll drink himself into an early grave. And he's resigned himself to the fact Twelve won't have another Victor in his lifetime.
This year? No chance. The Careers are at a large advantage, if they can wrangle up some sixteen year olds to Volunteer while everyone else sent in ten year olds. Twelve was doomed- there was definitely no kids sneakily working at the mines hiding their age (well, working in the mines by actually mining, not one of those kids opening track doors for minecarts. That wouldn't help in the arena.)
He supposes it's his fault too- Twelve is the most destitute of all Districts, but being the only Mentor for a whole District was unheard of. He'd been left alone since his first year, really, when Ashley Harper, the only other Victor, killed herself just before his victory tour, and since then he hasn't brought home a single Victor.
Maybe when he dies they'll replace him with someone better.
I hope you liked the Mentors, both canon or not! Who's your favourite? Next chapter is the D8 Reapings! I'm so glad we're nearly in the pre-games!