I felt a bit mean leaving you all hanging for a week so I decided to write a bonus chapter and give Fawkes a POV. He's not doing much, just thinking, but I thought it'd be cool to explore what's going on in his head.

The Rival

I'm used to falling out of love with people. I never expected that I'd fall out of love with the Hunger Games. It was such a constant in my life. I've lost count of the times I've curled up on the sofa after a breakup, opened a tub of mint choc-chip ice-cream (Ramona Hirose-Snow's favourite, according to an interview from a few months before her wedding) and lost myself in the Hunger Games. I loved it all - the showbiz, the suspense, the action!

Of course, I'd never expected that I'd ever be reaped.

I can pinpoint the exact moment when the Hunger Games had started to lose its lustre. I was on the train, my heart racing after meeting Wiress, Ramona and Beetee - our victors - when Binah Katayanagi had swept in with her dyed hair and her rebellious scowl and thrown herself into a chair.

"Tell us how to not die." She'd demanded.

Then I'd realised exactly what the stakes were. Either I was going to win and live the Hunger Games dream or I'd die and...

I don't want to think about what death would be like.

But, now, I lie down on the cold, hard floor and wait for death to take me.

My leg is a mess of torn flesh. Beetee won't send me any bandages, so I've had to make do with tearing up my clothes and using the strips to stop the bleeding. It's not the blood loss that's weighing on my mind, though.

Sometimes, I think I feel things moving, under my skin.

I'd been so happy when I'd killed that mutt. Wouldn't Manel be proud of me? Even with my wounded leg, I'd felt a buzz from being a mutt-slayer, just like my favourite victor. Maybe I could still win this. Maybe I could come back to him. Maybe he'd kiss me again, like he'd done on the roof of the Training Centre, the night before the games.

Maybe he'd tell me that everything was alright, that everything I'd done - every terrible thing - had been worth it in the end. Because was still alive. I still had a life.

But, no, the gamemakers just had to make their mutt venomous. My veins are full of poison. I'm dying.

I can't walk. I can't move. I can't search for Binah. There's no-one else left to kill her. All I can do is hope she gets herself killed before I die. Now would be a good time for her to make an offensive joke about the president, forcing the gamemakers to kill her. That wouldn't surprise me at all. Binah's biggest weakness is her anger.

I'd used that against her. I'd spat on her best friend's memory so she'd charge at me and I could trip her up and grab her knife. It had felt wrong. Back when I'd watched the Sixty-Eighth Hunger Games, I'd always identified with Ramona Hirose, the victor. We're both plotters. We both press every advantage. It's only now that I realise I have more in common with Dellon Takeda.

I'm not a fighter. I'm a performer, just like he was. If I'm going to win, it won't be with a glorious battle, it'll be with an act. I was born and raised in front of a TV screen. I'd always dreamed of being an actor, of watching myself be broadcasted across the country. Now I'm living my dream.

But at a price.

Maybe that was why I'd held back from killing Binah, just to gloat a little. All those cruel words had felt heavy on my tongue, but I'd said them anyway. Maybe I'd felt like I needed to do something more to earn my victory. Because standing over my final opponent and holding my knife to her throat hadn't made me feel like a victor.

It had made me feel like an coward.

Here I was, Fawkes Chau, a boy who'd spent the entire games playing with dolls and making the mutts do his dirty work for him, stealing the victory from my district partner.

I'd wanted a glorious moment of victory, like all the victors I'd grown up idolising. I should've just settled for any kind of victory. I should've just sliced my knife across Binah's throat, like she'd done to Cornelia so easily. I should've been merciful. Now I won't even have a hollow victory.

I'll have defeat. Death. Something twice as hollow.

Pain seizes my body. My limbs feel like they're being pumped full of molten lead. I scream, knowing that all of Panem will hear me.

Pain is good, Fawkes. Pain means you're still alive, you can still win. It's when the pain stops that you'll need to worry.

I silently will for Binah to die, so I can be lifted out of the arena and have all the poison taken out of my veins. The Capitol can work miracles when they want to. In the long and bloody history of the games, wounds have been healed, scars have vanished, even blindness has been cured. I cling to the thought that I can be myself again, not fearing for my life or plotting to kill anyone. I don't feel like myself anymore.

I haven't felt like myself since... I don't know. I don't even know when I crossed the line. I want to go back to how I was, before I was reaped. I was happy. I want to be happy again.

But, first, Binah has to die. She doesn't deserve it. I saw it in her eyes as Picaresque stumbled around the house, traumatised. Binah doesn't like hurting people. She doesn't like causing suffering.

Neither do I. But it's the only way I can win. I'm not strong enough to kill with just one strike. I have to break my opponents down, bit by bit.

Now I'm broken. I've got nothing to fight for but myself and I'm losing faith in that with every mind that I twist.

I'm losing myself in the Hunger Games.

There you have it, the Fawkes chapter. Fawkes is a lot of things - selfish, arrogant, unnecessarily paranoid - but he's not pure evil. He feels a lot of sympathy for his opponents but that doesn't stop him from hurting them to keep himself alive. It's only on what has the potential to be his deathbed that he realises that he's letting the arena turn him into a monster.