Clair Mushroom, Victor

"What's the Victory Tour going to be like?" I asked Loki as we were getting ready for... everything.

"It sucks!" he said, his face going drawn with memories. "It will probably be better for you. You didn't 'play dirty'."

Everything except Two and Six, I thought with foreboding.

"Oh also the other Victors will be barging in any minute now for initiation," Loki said.

"Initiation?" I asked. Am I gonna have to kiss a pig or something?

"They come out to tell every new Victor that they have a new family now. The only family that can really understand them," Loki said. "You get to pick what everyone does, like drawing pictures or getting ice cream or something."

By the time I heard the very exuberant knock on the door I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

The Games Building's botanical gardens were never very crowded even during the day. At night they were closed- closed to everyone except some persuasive Victors. We filed into the dimly lit pavilion, some of us more loudly than others. I fielded questions from curious new friends as I wandered through a rainforest section and came out in a serene landscape of gentle moss and swaying palm fronds and a trickling waterfall. It wasn't the same greenery as home but it wasn't metal and glass. It was alive again after so long. The air was sweet and smelled of dirt and pollen. Through the skylight I could see the moon.

"It's rough, an Arena like that," Hades said. He'd been in an indoor Arena just like I had. Funny how Seven had such luck with them. Loki's had been outdoors but still hardly natural. Only Sequoia and Paul had won in normal outdoor Arenas.

"It's no place for a person," I agreed. I couldn't understand why someone would want to wall themselves away from nature and live their life in a sterile artifice.

"Speak for yourself," Acee sniffed. "I'm not going to find a motherboard growing from a tree."

"And wheat doesn't grow from concrete," Nassor countered.

"I do like bread," Gidget said. "Especially garlic bread."

I was looking at a lotus blossom floating on a pond when I sensed everything going quiet around me. The urgent fear of a prey animal came back over me in a flash and I turned around. Everyone was looking at a thin red-haired woman walking up the pathway toward us. I turned to Loki, not seeing what all the fuss was about.

"That's Peppermint Wilson," he said in a hushed tone like he might spook her. "No one's seen her in nineteen years."

"Who's she?" I asked. A Victor, obviously, but one from so long ago I wasn't familiar with her.

"She won the Twenty-Fourth Hunger Games," Loki said. "After losing her twin brother."

Sympathy and horror washed over me. As Peppermint drew nearer I saw the details of her face and demeanor. There was a bitterness about her that colored every bit of her. Most of the Victors had an artificial agelessness but Peppermint's skin was sallow and lined. She moved stiffly and bent forward like she was chasing someone who owed her money. She was all turned inward and scarred over with her wound that never healed.

She stopped in front of me. "Let's go," she said. I followed her away from the other Victors and walked with her until she stopped at a bench underneath a dark copperwood tree. I waited for her to speak but she only glared at the ground.

"You hadn't heard of me, had you?" she said at last.

I admitted I hadn't.

"A lot of people thought I was dead," she said. She made a noise of derision. "I wished they were right. You know where I was all that time? A padded cell for most of it. Somewhere I couldn't do what I kept trying to do. And then alone in my house doing nothing but reliving it."

I didn't know what to say. Peppermint's pain seemed insurmountable. I couldn't call myself more equipped to help her than the family and doctors who had no doubt been trying for decades.

"Until I heard you'd won," Peppermint continued. "I finally left then, because there was something I needed to tell you." The years settled onto her so she was weighed down with her weariness and anger. "Don't end up like me."

"How am I supposed to do that?" I asked. Everything rushed back in on me and my throat clogged. "How do I get past it?"

"Don't try to be the same. You'll never be the same. Chasing that will only keep you frozen. You're a different person now. Figure out how to be that instead of trying to put things back," Peppermint said.

"Is that what you're doing?" I asked. It was funny how even in the depths of grief people still wanted to help other people.

"I'm trying to. Seems a bit late for me to learn something new," Peppermint said.

"I think you'd learn it better if you came out with us more," I said.

"Is that what you'd like?" Peppermint gave me the sarcastic look of someone used to people politely tolerating her presence but hoping she'd leave soon.

"I would," I said.

"We'll see what happens."

After nineteen in-universe years I decided to break my silence on Peppermint. Her submitter said she would likely kill herself if Apollo didn't win the outliers Resurrection Games and then never got back to me after he did so I didn't know if she wanted her dead or not. She's been Schrodinger's Tribute for all these years but I'm pretty sure her submitter is gone now so I decided to do this.