Prologue
Wade Larthey, 22
District Five
Victor of the 32nd Hunger Games
Ten years.
It had really been ten years.
Well, almost. The reaping was still a few days away, but for the first time, it didn't hold the same sort of dread that it had for the last ten years. His younger brother, Wilson, had turned nineteen a few months ago. He'd made it through the reapings unharmed – without even having to take tesserae, in fact.
That was thanks to Wade. Thanks to the fact that he had won the Games. The fact that he had killed three people. Three kids. But his winnings as a Victor meant that his family would never want for anything, ever. To them, that made him a hero.
A hero. That was what he'd always wanted to be, deep down. But real life was messier than that. To his family – to most of the district, even – he was a hero. But to the other districts, to the families of the tributes he'd killed, he was something else. A villain, maybe. A killer, certainly.
Were those two the same thing?
Wade took a deep breath as his fingers fumbled with the last of the buttons. The buttons were larger than average, which was supposed to make them easier to manage, but he still had trouble. The doctors in the Capitol had done their best, but between the burns and the broken bones, his fingers just weren't as nimble as they used to be. Most of the time, that wasn't any trouble, but these damn buttons…
Wade nodded triumphantly as he finally wrestled the last one through the button-hole, then slid on the pair of red gloves that Wilson had given him for his birthday. A new pair every year, like clockwork, to hide the scars and the occasional tremor. Besides, Wilson thought they made him look heroic.
Maybe they did. Maybe he was a hero. A hero and a villain. The frightened twelve-year-old whose name had been called at the reaping and the survivor who had strangled the life out of his final opponent. The boy who, deep down, wanted nothing more than to hide away with his comic books and ignore the world, and the Victor who was doing his best to use his position to help the people in his district.
Maybe he was both. Maybe he didn't have to choose. Maybe life was messier than that – full of contradictions and discord and conflict. And maybe that was for the best. Maybe it was better this way, better that things didn't quite fall into place the way they should, better that no one could tell exactly what the pattern was – or even if there was one.
It was certainly more interesting this way.
Well, I'm back. Yes, it's a SYOT. Information and the tribute form are up on my profile.
