Rory Hawthorne: Resident of District 12 and Victor of the 78th Annual Hunger Games
No matter the length in which Rory pondered why he had been reaped for the 78th Games, he still couldn't make sense of it. 21 years had passed and Rory Hawthorne was now 37 years old, yet he still failed to truly understand how his entrance to the games was a punishment for Peeta Mellark.
His brother, Gale, was a pest. He knew that. Still, Rory couldn't imagine Gale was more than a minor headache for the lone victor of the 74th Games. Even as Gale frequented the Victor's Village to shout curses at the Mellark boy and his family.
Rory never dared ask his fellow victor why his reaping was punishment, but the curiosity plagued him. Especially as the "blonde beauty" of the 74th Games descended into the same vindictiveness and alcoholism that Haymitch Abernathy had fallen to decades prior.
"Perhaps, Mellark felt guilty?" Rory questioned. That would explain his quiet and somber demeanor as Rory's mentor during the Games. "Guilt can cut deeper than the sharpest knife", Atala, the Capitolite drillmaster, once told him. Maybe this was why Snow reaped Rory, instead of just killing Peeta's family, for whatever slight was done to the Capitol. "Snow wanted a sense of guilt that would follow Peeta Mellark until he passed away" Rory thought. "Reaping the brother of the man who hated him, might've been the best way to truly dig under Peeta's skin".
Nonetheless, Rory Hawthorne held no ill will towards Peeta Mellark (despite his brother's insistence). In fact, he felt the man's pain and guilt. After all, Rory was forced to watch as his formerly kind and hopeful mentor and brother-figure fell to despair and heavy drinking. Forced to observe as the Sole Victor of the 74th Annual Hunger Games was consumed by hopelessness.
During all this, Rory persisted in his duties as mentor. He swore he would do everything to bring at least one of his tributes home. Even as the years passed and 12's tributes perished, one after the other, he would return one home to their family. "Perhaps this could be the year" he contemplated. "Or not". He looked at the reaping crowd gathered in front of the Hall of Justice. He eyed Peeta and Haymitch to his right, both with flask in hand, he pondered whether such men could mentor even the best of 12. "They're probably just as doomed as the rest that came before them" Rory thought. For a split second he considered giving into the same despair that took the two victors before him, but he relented. "No" he decided, "12 will have its day, or another solution will have to be found"...
Author's Note:
I wanted Rory to sound and act somewhat like Gale from the books with some of the empathy from Katniss, Peeta, and Madge. I thought this made the most sense for his character.