Abigail Fuse, District Three (15)
I still couldn't believe it actually happened. I was a Victor. I actually won.
It had been a crazy idea from the start- something out of a feel-good Capitol movie. A poor little District girl whose father took sick and she vowed to raise the money herself and at the end of the movie she's actually done it and everyone hugs and laughs and the screen fades to black. Movies are inherently unrealistic. No one wants to watch a movie about real life. We can just live that.
Really it was Ava who got me to the finale. Cordin and I would have died without her when the Careers attacked us. She was the one who killed Kisarna and stabbed Mase's eye before she bled out. That was the hardest part of the victory tour for me. Two looked right through me and saw the Victor they should have had, and I agreed with them. I thought that about a lot of Districts. I suppose all Victors do, except probably not the Careers, which were, of course, the only ones who should feel that way. That's just how morality works in Panem.
It was also right out of a movie that my plan worked with the glass. That one killed Demetria and Ashlyn, which was really something to be proud of. Later on when I watched the tapes I saw a little girl and her friend looking at a bunch of beautiful crystals in a window display when it shattered. I'd always thought "torn to pieces" was an expression. I'd spent all day hoping for Emma and Calvary, but no such luck. Weapons of mass destruction come with a tradeoff of precision.
The Gamemakers picked the perfect Arena for me. So much of the mall was made up of metal- hidden in the walls, running along the doorways of shops, and most importantly in the railings that lined the balconies. When I tore out a wire from the basement and connected it to the staircase railing I wasn't sure what would happen. Surely anyone touching the wire would be killed (which was what happened to Hadley). I was hoping for some side effects and got them in spades. The sudden hijacking of enough power to light up a three-story mall went haywire in half a dozen places, starting fires on all three floors.
No one actually burned to death. Smoke inhalation took care of that. Smoke rises, and I was in the basement. One cannon after another punctuated the shrieking fire alarm and the sound of materials popping and crackling. Caleb was the last one to die. I knew that because I saw him at top of the basement stairs crawling downward. I watched him crawl slower until he wasn't crawling at all.
My dad got his operations. All-new bone marrow grown in Capitol labs sowed through his system like seeds in a burned-over forest. And it worked. I hadn't dared to dream it actually would work. He gained color overnight and gained strength over the next weeks as new blood started washing through his veins. I brought my father back from the dead. Seeing him get out of bed and walk made every moment of the Games worth it. All the nightmares and agoraphobia couldn't compare to having my daddy back. I just wished the Capitol hadn't made this necessary. They made a big fuss about how grateful I should be that they gave my father this care. It wasn't any trouble for them. They could have done it out of human decency instead of making me go through hell. It wouldn't have cost them anything. It cost me everything.