Vice Harel

Outsiders always think that all the District One names are stupid. All the Charms and Glorys and Victors, outsiders don't understand that their name is a promise, a prophecy. People in District One say that a name is a part of you, that it'll decide the person you become. So why did she have to name me Vice?

I grew up going to school with kids whose names were something worth working for. Who doesn't want to have honor or be marvelous or dazzling? They were made for great things. They were born to love and conquer and live happy lives, clinging to an identity that could never be taken from them. And I was made for vice. Sin and wickedness and all the things that nobody could love, no matter how bright that little boy smiled, no matter how many times I tried to be good. To be a Concord or Charm or anything but Vice.

But my destiny was written the moment I was born and my mom whispered that word through her lips, reached for a breath that never came, and collapsed. And when they pulled my name out of the reaping ball thirteen years later, it didn't matter that I smiled for the camera as I nervously edged up the stairs onto the stage. It didn't matter that my voice cracked as I told the escort I'd try to make my district proud. Nobody was watching when I squeezed my crying district partner's hand and told her it would be all right.

They play the recaps, and the highlights never show me sobbing while I try and fail to will the courage to kill the bunny caught in my snare. They don't show me saving the boy from Twelve, Asher was his name, from their mutts. Not the nights I spent wide awake, my eyes a bloody red as I smacked my fist into my head, trying so hard to stay awake so I could protect the helpless boy whose fever was rising every day, closer to a death that I knew was coming.

And then they show me beside him, morning rays dancing across my eyelids, the dagger lost between my loose fingers and lying in the dirt, my head leaning against his shoulder. They always show the blood when the girl from Two shoves her spear through the back of his neck. But the focus of the camera is always on the girl, or on Asher sometimes.

It's never on me.

They never see my eyes crack open. If that memory hadn't been burnt onto the inside of my skull I might've forgotten what it looked like. The blood spewed from his throat and onto my head, the feeling of stickiness and warmth trickling through my follicles of hair like wet sand through the fingers of a closed fist. There was the smell and taste and sound too, but none of those are what stay with me. It's that feeling, my dark brown hair intermixing with blood a darker red than I thought possible. I can still see that image. I can feel it.

So sure, when they show me ripping the dagger from the dirt and lodging it into her eye, and then across her jaw and through the flesh of her throat, they're showing me. And the next five kills are all shown in that same gruesome detail, and they watch my hands and my hair darken a deeper red, and they nod their head and say that it all makes sense. That rabid boy, that killer. That Vice.

But they never show me letting the bunny go. They never show the red that was in my eyes while I tried to stay awake. It's not fair. Every recap always ends the same way. That close-up shot of my bloodied hands, shaking as they hold a dagger in my district partner's heart. It isn't fair.

Why can't it end with me holding her hand?

Hello again! I don't know how many prologues I'm going to do, but I suppose that I'll keep on doing these short victor chapters until the cast list is filled, however long that takes. The response to my first chapter was so overwhelming and kind, and I want to thank everyone that's taken time out of their day to post a review, send me a PM, or even just quietly read. You all are the best '3

All the Love,

CC