The 76th Annual Victory Tour….Somewhere in District 2...
Deen Sparrow
"What do you do in your spare time now that you've won the Hunger Games Deen?" An interview asks as we stand inside the giant modern gymnasium.
Shit...that's a good question.
We're doing the interview where Brutus, an older but still really fit victor had suggested. He said he wanted to test out my wrestling skills for himself, since I had managed to take down both of District 2's tributes this year with a number of wrestling moves.
It was supposed to play up the friendly cooperation and competition growing between District 12 and District 2. Really it was just a bunch of PR bullshit made up for the cameras. Like this whole interview. Nobody really cared what I did in my free time, as long as I looked good doing it. Happy, and confident and the perfect picture of a young strong victor.
I can't tell them the truth, which is that I've taken to boozing and whoring around every chance I get when my mentors and chaperones aren't watching. Or that I'm having flashbacks more often now than when I first got back from the Games. No, I can't say any of that. So instead I shrug and adopt the smirking suggestive wink they all seem to love so well, especially the female interviewers.
"Oh, well I haven't exactly figured out what my talent will be. But I sure am having fun narrowing it down…" I reply and I think the reporter actually licks her lips.
Well, well… maybe this interview wouldn't be a total waste of time…
"That's why we're here today, right Sparrow? So we can see if you've got the chops to become a fitness and combat expert." Brutus cuts in on my and the reporter's eye banging moment and I fight the urge to grit my teeth.
If I had to get half naked and sweaty with someone on the floor I certainly didn't want it to be with a 200 pound meat head like Brutus. But the show must go on.
"Exactly." I tell him and switch over from seductive to deadly serious in an instant. Brutus smiles at me in violent anticipation and moves to walk over to the center mat.
I sigh and stand up. I unzip and shrug out of my athletic jacket, and then pull my shirt over my head. This was another one of the trademarks that the cameras seemed to be demanding more of these days. More skin, more innuendo, more well….of me…
"It's just a friendly match." My mentor Katniss calls from the sidelines. She's standing next to her fiance, Peeta, and gripping his arm in tense anxiety. You'd think I was her child or her kid brother by the way she fusses over me these days. I don't know what she had done with the hard edged, no nonsense Seam girl I'd encountered when we first met. But ever since I got back from the Games, she was constantly watching over me like I was going to break.
But, it was too late for caution or carefulness. The breaking had already been done during the Games. And she couldn't have prevented it even if she wanted to. No use crying over it now.
The reporter leans down to pick up my discarded shirt off camera, holds it up to her face and takes a discreet whiff. I smirk over my shoulder and shoot her a wink. She blushes.
Yep, absolutely no sense in crying over things none of us could change. I was just resolved to get whatever enjoyment I could out of this whole catastrophe. So I moved to the center of the mat and got into that headspace that always seemed to be waiting eagerly.
The warrior zone.
Where all I felt was the quiet pick up of my heartbeat and the heightened awareness of all my senses. And I wasn't nervous about wrestling Brutus even though he had a good 50 or 60 pounds of muscle on me. No, I never got scared anymore of things like that. Peacekeepers with their big guns, or the sight of the whipping posts in town squares. All of that seemed like the nightmares of the old Deen. The new me understood that those were the very least of what could be done to ordinary people with ordinary lives.
And now that I was a victor my fears were not ordinary anymore. My nightmares were filled with strange monsters and psychedelic colors and images that a normal human mind would have trouble dreaming up, much less trying to contain.
So I wrestled Brutus.
And he won 2 out of 3 matches. Because that had been pre agreed upon as well. More reassurances for the powers that be. But I had changed up the order in which we were supposed to win. I took him by surprise in the 2nd match, and actually beat him for real. The annoyance he exhibited afterwards was apparent, but then like a good Capitol lap dog he just got right back on script.
We finish, and people cheer but there's still an air of expectancy in the small crowd of professional trainers and fighters that have gathered to watch two victors fight. No doubt when the blood gets pumping in District 2 it's pretty hard to settle it back down. They were such a violent, bloodthirsty bunch.
"You're good, kid. If I didn't know better I'd have thought you had some District 2 running through your veins." Brutus comments in what I think might have been intended as a compliment but actually creeps me out a little. I don't want to be anything like these die hard Capitol loving freaks.
"Oh no brother, I'm all 12 through and through. In fact, it was my mentor who taught me how to wrestle properly in the first place." I tell him with a measured smirk and he looks over at Peeta in surprise.
"Loverboy? No way." He says and shakes his head in disbelief. The others chuckle, but softly. Katniss and Peeta are still far enough away they can't hear us talking.
"Don't let the blond curls fool you. He's knocked me on my ass more times than I can count. Even with just the one good leg." I tell them seriously, because it's true. At first I had scoffed when Katniss suggested Peeta teach me how to wrestle. And I laughed until he wiped the floor with me. And then I had learned what everyone else on the team had known for a long time.
That underneath the smiles and jokes and all around good boy charm he seemed to exude, there was something strong not weak that existed in his center. After that I had taken his training seriously. And it saved my life in the Games.
So I didn't want anyone, especially not these District 2 meatheads to get it wrong. District 12 didn't owe them shit. We had won the Games twice in 3 years, that was nothing to laugh at.
"I'd love to see it for myself." Enobaria, another District 2 victor who had pointed teeth like a wild predator said as looked over at Peeta. Her look wasn't sexual in nature, as with most women who stared at my mentor, but there was something hungry about it that I didn't like.
And so, with the help of the reporters and the cameras, Enobaria and Brutus and their pack of feral friends wrangled Peeta and I into a match. And they filmed it, for television.
Katniss scowled the whole time. And Haymitch had the audacity to go around placing bets on who would win. Effie worried about the schedule being thrown off.
But me and Peeta just focused on getting this over with. I got the feeling he didn't like being in the spotlight again, and I understood him. Still, I tried my best. But those 3 matches with Brutus had tired me out, and well, maybe Peeta had some of his own anger issues to work out underneath the perfect golden boy routine.
He totally kicked my ass. And people loved it. The reporter that had been eyeing me before was now fully tuned into him and even fanning her face a little as she stared at him.
Oh, well…
And when he lifted up the bottom of his shirt to wipe away the sweat from his forehead I thought her underwear were about to spontaneously combust right there in the middle of the gym she looked so flushed and turned on.
And for about the millionth time I thought that his hair and eye color and all that charm was severely wasted on him, for all the advantage he took of it. The only woman he ever really looked at was Katniss, and she was usually too anxious or depressed to notice.
But actually right now...Katniss was staring at Peeta.
Well, more specifically she was staring at his naked chest in mild fascination. He finished wiping the sweat off his face, and let the shirt drop. I'm sure to the utter disappointment of the entire female population of Panem.
"You're still not guarding your left as well as you should." Peeta tells me, pointedly ignoring the blatant looks the reporter is sending him. Oh, he wasn't oblivious, he just wasn't interested in any girl without grey eyes and a perpetual scowl.
Except right now Katniss wasn't scowling. She was...well since she was such a reserved person it would be hard for most people to tell, but the look she was giving her fiance was something that could be interpreted by someone who knew her and compared to the practically drooling looks I got sometimes from the school girls.
I found this immensely amusing.
"I guard my left just fine. I was just tired, that's all." I tell him with a smirk as I lean down to pick up the shirt and jacket the reporter had obviously discarded in haste after she saw Peeta and I wrestle.
"Katniss, he dropped his left guard again didn't he?" Peeta asks as he finally looks over at her. And he notices her slightly zoned out look. His forehead wrinkles.
I wonder if he'll put two and two together...
She blinks, coming out of her stupor.
"What?" She asks, blushing and flustered. And it would be adorable, if it weren't so tragic and painfully obvious.
"He said I dropped my guard again." I tell her with a cheeky arch of my eyebrows. She's always fun to tease, especially about anything to do with sex.
She's like a grade schooler, even though she's older than me, and she and Peeta are pretty much adults. Or they will be in a few weeks.
"Oh, yeah, I guess so." She replies and blushes. She knows that I caught her ogling him. It makes her squirm. I wonder how she's going to handle being married to him in a little over half a year if she gets this uncomfortable over a little wrestling match?
He had mentioned once that even though they share a bed on the train, it's more to keep the nightmares and flashbacks away. I hadn't believed him back then until after I won, and the nightmares started coming for me too.
Theirs was a really weird relationship. There was all this unsaid stuff all the time, and implied stuff, and mysterious stuff. And tension….underneath all the teamwork and platonic hand holding and even the gentle kissing on camera...always this freaky kind of unnamable tension. Sometimes it made me anxious just looking at the two of them.
Like right now.
They were staring into each other's eyes like they were the only two people in the room. And there was this low burning fire in his blue ones. It seemed really obvious and apparent that he wanted her, and it was also apparent that he was trying not to show it. She was pink cheeked and glowing like she loved the way he looked at her.
These moments always threw me for a loop. They were so...intense….even though I was just an observer it was like I could almost feel the longing and the passion there. I shook myself out a little. No sense in getting caught up in drama that wasn't mine.
"Well next time try paying better attention to the match and less attention to the sexiness of the two good looking victors on the mat!" I throw out the perfectly timed line to cut through the sea of pent up sexual stress that is threatening to envelop the room.
And everyone laughs.
Then Katniss blushed furiously.
And Peeta looked away.
I smirk and start chatting with Brutus about footwork and all sorts of stupid wrestling stuff. The reporter zeros in on Peeta and Katniss and starts asking them about the wedding of course.
They deliver some lines about counting down the months, and talk about how excited they are, and then they kiss. And this time her hand doesn't reach out automatically to grab his, but rather she rests it on his hip. And he tightens his arms around her and you can almost hear the sizzle in the air.
Then they stop. And she blinks and he blinks and the masks come back up and they're smiling in that fake and rehearsed happy way and I sigh.
He's totally wasting it.
Man, if I felt half that much fire for any of the women I took to bed I'd never have to pick up a bottle again.
Hopefully they'd figure it out on the honeymoon. Tonight I'd just try to figure out which one of these District two she-wolves was the least likely to bite me if I proposed a brief encounter in a broom closet.
It's the little things in life you have to hang on to, to find the strength to face the impending tomorrow.