A/N: Thanks to richards25, DigbyThompson, I-am-Cashmere-the-victor, charliesunshine, mangesboy01, Kiliflower and Silent2411 for reviewing!
Also, in response to a guest review (District4girl), I'll gladly use the victor, but the year of the Games would have to change due to trying to keep in canon with my other fanfics. Still, I'm sure that I can find a place for her in the latter chapters of the story.
Which reminds me; we're over two thirds of the way through! :D
Here's another victor from 'Catching Fire'. Tick, tock, tick, tock...
"Over and in, last call for sin
While everyone's lost, the battle is won
With all these things that I've done
All these things that I've done."
- Brandon Flowers, 2004.
The 53rd Annual Hunger Games
Wiress Duncan (17), District 3 Female
The Killers - All These Things That I've Done (2004)
In the eyes of the Capitol, the Hunger Games is the most exciting spectacle of the year, where hundreds of thousands of people give three weeks of their attention to twenty-four young tributes, eager to see them spill each other's blood.
In the eyes of the Capitol, the victors of these Games achieve eternal glory and the prestige associated with surviving the arena. Victors should be respected and idolised for achieving the success that they always craved. They aimed to survive the arena, and proceeded to do exactly that.
Revered by all in the Capitol, many victors have become household names in the city, from Amadeus Cato to Ivy Grant, and from Harrow Greaves to Sapphire Tompkins.
Of course, the Capitol mainly remembers the Careers, who had been hungry for victory all of their life, and devoted their teenage years to surviving the arena. Many of them are the perfect image of a strong, proud victor that the Capitol has come to idolise over the years.
But many of the victors, especially those from non-Career districts, fare much worse after the arena.
For those who have had to suddenly adapt to the life-and-death ideals of the arena, the experience can be traumatising, even for the victors. Many victors have been damaged beyond repair in many ways. And I'm not just referring to physical injuries, such as those that Chaff of District 11 suffered a few years before the Second Quarter Quell. Some victors are mentally scarred to an extent that I never knew was possible. Some just about manage to keep control of their lives, but are left empty; shells of their former selves. Others, such as a couple of aging victors from District 6, turn to substances - drugs, alcohol, painkillers; anything they can get their and on, really - to block out the world.
Either way, the arena changes everyone.
I've only been in here a week, and already I feel like I've aged by ten years.
Nothing was of real importance at home in District 3. I was learning to go into my father's trade, as he works as a postman for the district, but has been struggling in his job lately due to his age and the recent onset of arthritis in his knees. It's not a typical job for District 3, but someone's family has to do it, and my super-intelligent elder brother will clearly be going into better things than the mail service. Because I would be secured a job in District 3, school was of little interest or use to me, so I spent more time chattering at the back of classrooms with my friends than actually paying attention to the teachers. Everything in my life was trivial.
Then came the reaping, and suddenly I found myself flung into a very dangerous world, that I haven't yet managed to escape. I now know that the Wiress who entered the arena definitely won' be leaving it.
There really is no way of describing the events that I have seen other than as atrocities. It's only been eight days since I entered the arena, and eleven of us are still alive, but it has felt like eternity. Every day I have woken to a new terror, believing that it will be my last.
But this morning, as I slowly rise from my slumber, I feel more vulnerable than ever.
The arena is nothing too unique; an arctic valley, lined with snow-capped pines and surrounded by vicious mountains. A frozen river meanders through the valley, which is roughly half a mile wide, and is the only body of water in the arena. This being said, nobody ventures to it as water is easily accessible due to the abundance of snow.
Throughout the first week, I took care to stay predominantly within the confines of the dense woodland high on the slopes of the valley, hopefully out of the way of the Careers, who had been on the prowl all week. Along with my district partner Christopher, I managed to survive well until the seventh day of the Games.
Then came the Careers.
There were only two of them; one was from District 4, but I didn't recognise the other. I spotted them early, blundering through the undergrowth with little ease, making enough noise to alert the whole arena of their whereabouts. Still, our efforts to escape were futile; only my slight, nimble body let me narrowly escape their grasp as I took to the trees to evade them.
Christopher, however, was not so fortunate.
At home, when watching the Games live, I had seen it all before, but nothing actually prepared me to watch somebody die.
Christopher and I had escaped the bloodbath on the first day early, grabbing the nearest backpacks to our pedestals and leaving hastily. Since then, we'd barely seen anybody else.
It wasn't just the sight that horrified me. It was the way that his screams echoed through the valley, the sadistic glint in his murderers eyes when no mercy was given to him, and the way that the air hung thick with the smell fo blood as his decimated corpse lay alone on the frozen ground once they were gone.
Like it or not, it was an experience that will stay with me for the rest of my life.
But in the arena, what goes around, comes around. And yesterday evening, merely six hours after Christopher's demise, I found myself in a life-or-death situation once again.
I'm lucky that I didn't stumble across a Career, otherwise I probably wouldn't be able to sit here recalling yesterday's events, as I am doing right now. It was the girl from District 7; a youngster. A weakling.
I'm still not sure whether that made it better or worse, either killing an innocent, defenceless child or risking my life against a stronger, older, better-trained tribute. Nor am I sure how I managed to commit the act of killing so effortlessly. I knew that it was bound to be a horrific experience, so I tried desperately to rely upon my instincts and block out reality, but to no avail. Emotion still seeped through as I hacked frantically at the poor girl with my stolen knife, which was still coated in Christopher's blood. I'm not sure whether it would have been better to be the murderer or the murdered.
Murderer.
I'm already starting to refer to myself as a murderer.
I can't afford to let the arena change me. Not yet.
I've still got a job to do.
For the sake of Christopher and all the other poor children to be killed so far in the Games, I owe it to them to try.
And I'll continue to try my hardest to survive.
Until I start to lose my senses, that is.
The 53rd Games lasted a further five days, until, on the morning of the sixteenth day, the Gamemakers played their trump card; a set of vicious ice mutts designed to look like the tributes already slain during the Games.
The deadly mutts forced the final six into confrontations, killing three and forcing the other three together; the girls from Districts 3, 4 and 9. The strongest of the girls, the Career from Four, had already finished off the girl from Nine by the time that Wiress arrived in the small clearing that the ice mutts had led them to, but the Career was battle-weary and unprepared at Wiress' sudden attack, eager to finish the Games.
During the fight, the Career was defeated, but Wiress couldn't bring herself to strike the final blow to the defeated girl. After a few seconds of indecision, the ice mutts approached the girl from District 4, finishing her.
In death, Christopher's ice mutt had managed to take revenge on his murderer.
A/N: I feel as though this might have flitted through quite a few topics...
Anyway, if you enjoyed this chapter, please review! Constructive criticism is welcomed :) We got a record nine reviews for the last chapter, can we go one better with this one? :)
