A/N- Salutations everyone! Sorry for kind of late update, but this was longer than I thought and so it took me longer than expected to write. But that does mean that you get more Guthrie time, yay! Anyway, here is Guthrie's post-games interview in the heart of the Capitol...


"Oh, Guthrie." My stylist takes a step back from brushing the 'dust' from the shoulders of my suit and puts a hand to her chest. "You look perfect. Absolutely perfect."

I turn ninety degrees clockwise to stand directly in front of the full length mirror that takes up the entire wall and stare at my reflection. I can't say I look much like myself, but I do look quite good and I don't mean it in an arrogant way like Ray. Ray. Images and sick memories come flooding back; the venomous look in his eyes as he pushed his scimitar into my flesh and the callous grin he flashed me as I crumbled to the ground in complete agony and shock. I thought I was a dead man, that I had fallen at the final hurdle, but somehow things had turned around and I managed to keep alive and win the Games. It's still a shock to me, winning the Games, like that feeling you get when you're half awake and not sure if you're still dreaming or stumbling blindly through reality. I'll probably adjust to life soon enough, I'm good at adjusting, always have been. But that doesn't mean I'll ever forget.

"That suit was the perfect choice, don't you think?" My stylist says, admiring her selection. "I think the deep blue really matches your eyes and compliments the darkness of your hair. What do you reckon?"

I take another look at myself and I do see what she means; the blue really does match my eyes. I never really noticed what exact colour my eyes were before, I just presumed they were a normal shade of blue, but thinking about it now, I can notice the darkness of the blue, sort of like the part of the rainbow where the blue starts to become indigo. And my hair, well I always knew it was dark brown, it's just how I like it: not fiddled around with. It took some charming on my half to persuade my stylist not to rub a load of gel into my hair, I almost had to ask her out on a date in order to make her tell the hairdresser to put down the pot of 'super-glossy' hair gel. She probably thinks I fancy her now… I'm not saying she isn't attractive, because despite the peculiar tattoos, she is quite pretty, but I don't see her as anything more than a stylist. And I hope she realises that I was charming her, not flirting with her.

"Earth to Guthrie…" She waves a hand in front of my face and I blink, startled.

"Yeah?"

"I asked you what you thought of the suit." She replies. "About it being a perfect choice and matching your eyes and setting off your dark hair."

"Oh, sorry." I say. "I agree, it's the perfect choice. Thanks."

"There is a reason why I'm a stylist." She gives me a wink, then starts to usher me out of the room. "C'mon, I've kept you long enough already, the interview is due to begin any minute!"

As I'm hurriedly escorted from the backstage prep room, I feel a small sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I'm not nervous about the interview, I'm quite a people-person so my first interview didn't bother me much, but I can't help feeling a slight dread. What sorts of things will I be asked?

We stop at the base of the stairs where at the top lies the stage where my interview will be held. I've climbed these stairs once before, but I know that this time will be very different. It will be different because instead of twenty three other people taking it in turns to be spoken to, it will just be one. Me. Me and the rest of Panem watching.

The signal is made for me to enter the stage and I flash my stylist a smile before climbing the stairs. As I reach the top, I look behind to see my stylist mouth 'good luck' and then with a deep breath, I walk onto the stage.

The greeting I receive is an uproar of heavy claps and ear piercing woo's. I look to the hundreds of rows of brightly dressed people who all cheer my name. I feel like a celebrity, well I guess I am one! I raise a hand and give them all a wave, resulting in an even louder cheer and someone even tosses a rose onto the stage. I bend down swiftly and retrieve the flower, yelling thank you to whoever threw it. A girl in a turquoise dress claims it to be her and flushes a deep scarlet in her cheeks. The girl beside her, probably a friend or sister, appears to be jealous of the attention I have just given to the other girl and calls my name, before throwing something herself. It lands just in front of my feet and as I reach to pick it up, I quickly realise that it's a piece of silk underwear and retract my hand. An awkward blush passes across my face, I've never had attention from girls on this scale before. I know Penelope, my ex-girlfriend, used to stalk me crazy, but she never showed me her underwear! I guess the girls here like my innocence because a ripple of giggles passes through the audience as I shuffle away from the undergarment.

"It seems you're very popular with the ladies today, Guthrie!" Morgana Volptura, this year's host, comes trotting over to me in her ridiculous six-inch platform stilettos that are so shiny they reflect the spotlights back into the audience. "But I think it's my turn now, right? This is meant to be an interview, not a catwalk, haha!"

"You're not jealous, are you?" I joke, walking back with her to the seats in the centre of the stage.

"Oh, you're much too young for me!" Morgana laughs, sitting down on her signature purple swivel chair. I take the plush sofa opposite. "However, seeing that you're the Victor of the biggest Games I will ever see in my lifetime, I could be persuaded to take a toy-boy…" There's a whooping from the audience and Morgana waits for the noise to quieten down before starting to talk again. "We're getting a little side-tracked now, so shall we begin with the interview?"

"That sounds fine with me." I say. "Give me your worst."

Morgana crosses one thin leg over the other; she means business. I take a slow breath and prepare myself for the questions that are to come.

"Let's start with the obvious question." Morgana says. "What were your thoughts when the last canon fired and you became the Victor?"

I shrug lightly. "I dunno, I passed out." The crowd erupt into laughter.

"Oh yes, of course." Morgana says, her eyes moving over to my lower stomach. "How is your wound? You seem to be walking fine, so it must be a little better."

I nod. "Oh they've patched me up wonderfully. I have a thick bandage wrapped around my waist that is keeping out anything that may cause infection. When they changed the bandage this morning the wound seemed half the size; you're medicine is like faerie dust!"

Morgana nods. "Well, the Capitol is magical, that's for sure! I'm glad to hear that you're feeling better, I was almost positive that you were going to die when Ray stabbed you. Did you think that too?"

"Yeah." I reply honestly. "I really did think that it was the end for me. But obviously this planet wasn't ready to lose me yet."

"I think a lot of people weren't ready to lose you, Guthrie." The audience cheer as Morgana gestures to the rows of screaming fans. I'm still quite shocked that so many of these strangers like me so much; what have I done? I've killed two people and watched many others die, how does that make me a celebrity?

"So, when you thought you were dying, what thoughts entered your mind?" She asks.

"Lots of stuff, really." I reply. "My family, my friends…"

"Which friends?"

"Jamar, of course, he was who I was dying for." My best friend's face appears in the back of my mind and again I'm reminded that all I did was worth it. It was all worth it just to have him alive and well and looking after his Mom. I know what I did was extreme and the pain it must have caused my family, but I just know that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if Jamar had died and left his Mom in the condition she was in. If he had died, she might as well had died as well because without Jamar she'd have no-one to care for her whilst her husband worked to earn enough money to buy her medication. It was a big risk, I know, but it paid off in the end.

"You must feel so proud of yourself, Guthrie." Morgana says. "To volunteer for your friend like that and then to come back alive."

"Yeah, I guess…"

Morgana takes a sip of her water, then turns back to me. "On the subject of friends, we saw you making a couple of friends in the arena… And one of them stood out to you in particular, didn't they?"

I feel my cheeks getting a little warm, the skin tingling as a couple of voices from the audience shout out Heidi's name. I'm not usually much of a blusher, but when sitting in front of so many people and a camera pointing directly at me, I can't stop my cheeks from turning pink.

"Yes, you know who I'm talking about." Morgana smirks. "A certain young girl with golden hair and a pretty face…"

"Heidi." I say her name quietly and immediately feel a taste of regret in the back of my throat. The general shuffling sounds from the audience seem to fade away and they all become silent, just listening.

"I am so sorry about what happened to her, she was such a lovely girl." Morgana says softly, touching my arm sympathetically. "You two would have been such a wonderful couple and I'm sure the rest of Panem would agree."

Not everyone… I say to myself, thinking of Penelope. I wonder if she's watching this now, no actually I know that she's watching this- and probably with a huge glare on her face.

"It was such a shame when she…passed away." Morgana continues. "I'm sorry if it upsets you, but would you mind telling us about her in your own words?"

Her gaze falls upon me expectantly as I try to form words through the lump that has formed in the back of my throat. I swallow it down enough to push out a sentence. "She didn't…deserve to die."

A collective sympathetic sigh passes through the audience and I see the girl in the turquoise dress sniff into a white handkerchief. I should be teary right now, but for some reason I don't feel like crying at all. I'm done with all the weeping and feeling sorry for myself; I did that all last night. Now is the time to move on and reflect upon what has happened, not dwell over what I could have done to prevent this and what I could have done to stop that and all of that moping talk. I think maybe seeing Heidi as a ghost on that last day was the push I needed to stop blaming myself for everything and move on. I fear that if that hadn't have happened, I wouldn't be sitting here now.

With that thought, I manage to push away the lump and clear my throat. "Heidi was… quite a special person."

"In what ways do you think that?" Morgana urges me to talk more.

"Well," I say. "Despite all that was happening around her, seeing her friends die and having that constant fear of being next; Heidi always managed to show a little smile. She may have seemed fragile to begin with, afraid of the unknown and a little, let's just say, melodramatic. But I saw her develop and change through the time that I knew her. She became not only physically stronger, but emotionally stronger too. I don't think I could have gotten where I am today without her influence and company. To me, she was more than just an ally, she was a friend. And if she was here now, she'd probably be telling me that I sound like an idiot and to shut up before I embarrassed her further."

Morgana lifts a thin finger to her eye and wipes at the corner. "That, Guthrie, was beautiful, truly beautiful."

"The truth is a beautiful thing." I reply.

"So tell me, Guthrie." Morgana says. "Did you love Heidi?"

"Love her?" I say. "No, I didn't love her. I grew close to her and I had some feelings for her, but I didn't love her. But I think that if I had the chance to spend more time with her then maybe I would grow to love her."

"You're a very truthful person, Guthrie." Morgana says. "And I really like that; the Games often change people completely, but you don't seem to have been a victim of that."

"Oh, I have changed." I correct her. "Definitely. But in ways that you can't really see. I look the same, sound the same, but inside I feel different."

"A good different?"

"Well I've killed some people, so that can't be a good different, can it?"

Morgana frowns. "I guess not… But that leads onto my next question. So, throughout the Games you kill two people: Tal Fontaine and Raymond Periwinkle. Let's talk about Tal first. We saw that it wasn't actually you who was fighting with Tal, but rather an ex-ally, Zephyr Torelli. Most people would have walked away and left them to fight, but you didn't. Why?"

"Because to me, he was still my ally." I answer simply.

"But he left you." Morgana points out. "He ran off with Luna and left you. Didn't that upset, or even anger you?"

I shake my head. "In the arena there's no room for pettiness. Zephyr didn't do anything bad against me and the rest of the alliance, he simply left, that's all. Perhaps he didn't want to stay in the alliance for too long because he didn't want it to come to killing his friends. I don't know. But what I do know is that when I saw him pinned against that tree, a trident spear to his neck, I saw my ally. And allies help each other, so that is exactly what I did."

"Do you feel guilty about it now?" Morgana asks.

I nod. "Of course I do. I mean, I took away someone's life, someone who had a family and friends and a life. But he was about to do the same to someone else, so either way a life would have been wasted. So I feel guilty, yes, but I do not regret my actions."

"And what about Ray?" Morgana inquires. "How did that feel to kill for the second time? And this time not for someone else, but for yourself?"

"It wasn't just for myself." I say. "Ray killed Heidi in a vicious and cruel way and she deserved justice. At first I wasn't thinking about myself and getting out of the arena; all I was thinking was that this boy standing in front of me killed Heidi and he's joking about it. That's what caused me to react as I did."

"But that didn't turn out so great though, did it?" Morgana says. "So when you finally succeeded and got justice for Heidi, what did you feel like?"

"I felt empty."

"Empty?" Morgana seems surprised. "But you had gotten your revenge!"

"It was never about getting revenge, or being 'even'." I tell her. "So even though I had done to Ray what he had done to Heidi, I felt no sense of achievement. Because, at the end of the day, I was just as bad as him. A murderer."

"But—"

"I know, I didn't kill for fun like he did." I stop her before she says anything more. "I still killed though, so I'm not a good person."

"But you can't win the Games without killing anyone, so no-one blames you." Morgana insists. "You're not a bad person."

"I guess I'm not." I say, shrugging. "I'm just another in a whole history of lucky murderers."

"I'd prefer not to use the word murderer, Guthrie." Morgana says. "Let's stick with the word Victor, shall we?"

"Fine." I agree. "I'm just another Victor."

"Not just another Victor." Morgana winks, rising from her feet and taking my hand, pulling me up too. She walks me to the front of the stage where she thrusts my hand into the air and presents me to the audience. "You're Guthrie Zython, the Victor of the five-hundredth Hunger Games!"

As the audience clap and cheer and scream my name, Morgana glows next to me with pride. And all I do is smile and wave. That's all I can do right now, and that's the truth. And the truth is a beautiful thing.


A/N- Oosh, I felt emotional writing that... I decided that Guthrie would be more of a meaningful person rather than a whole 'yay I won the Games' or 'ah life is so depressing' sort of person. Hence the occasional deep comment. Did you like that about Guthrie?

So, thoughts? I am ecstatic with the amount of readers and reviewers I have, please keep it up! We only have one more chapter left, so please please please review! Even if it is just a general comment on the whole story, I'd love to hear anything you think! I did have a comment about doing Guthrie's Victory Tour... Well, I wasn't planning on doing it, I was just going to stop before the Victory Tour, but if many people want me to do a bit about the tour then I may be persuaded... It may not be the whole tour, but instead little highlights from districts that Guthrie had connections with in the Games, like 12 (Heidi), 9 (Zephyr) etc. What do you think?

I'll put up a poll on my profile so you can all vote on whether I should write some of Guthrie's Victory Tour or not. If everyone reading would vote, even to say no, then that would be brilliant and I would love you forever. After all, I am writing this for you readers, so if you want me to write more then all you have to do is vote and it may be a possibility!

Thanks, FireflyLlama x