Every time Jon watches one of his tributes die, he hates himself a little more for failing in his duties as mentor and for being made to aid in the slaughter of innocents. But when he watches delicate little Sansa Stark, the girl whose family took him in after his victory, when the rest of his family was killed by the Capitol, standing on her mark with the countdown clock booming out over the arena, he knows he can't fail in his duty again. He has to make sure this is the year District 8 has another victor.
She's beautiful. That helps. Her beauty more than his tactics win her sponsors.
But he watches the light of innocence slowly fade from her ocean blue eyes as children die around her and she can do nothing to save them. If she lives, he tells himself, she'll be able to visit the ocean. They'll go there together.
She's injured on the third day, her back cut to ribbons by mutts, and Jon bares his teeth and rages at the screens until a fellow mentor sedates him with morphling.
When he wakes, she's not dead. It might have been better if she was.
On the last day there are only three. Petyr, the short, crafty boy who's eyed Sansa as if she was a prize to be won, kills the remaining career through cunning—poison—and Sansa kills him with a kiss and a knife in the side that Jon sent her in a package that cost him his dignity but saves her life. The girl he knew could have never done it.
Sansa Stark the 70th victor of the Hunger Games and at what cost.