Felix Veaux, District Ten- 18
No one told me the Capitol would be so gross. I liked the food and the colors and all but I'd worked as a butcher my whole life and now knew what it was like to be the piece of meat. Once a classmate of mine said that girls who get catcalled are lucky. I knew he was wrong then but I knew he was wrong now.
Then the Games started and even the Capitol would have been better than what we went through. My allies and I had harbored some illusions that we'd stick together and fight the good fight. That all ended when Lyte died in the Bloodbath. Isn't that just poetic? Light swallowed up by darkness or something. Very ninth-grade English class.
It was me, Tillo, Reiner and Hunter when the fight with the Careers came. Shogo had bled out days ago, which just fit the theme of the good dying young. There's something not right about a country where a man lies to his son because he knows he'll be an orphan soon. And of course the Careers were untouched. Calvary had snuck off but Kisarna, Mase and Emma were plenty threat without her. We'd been trying to sneak downstairs when they caught us and pinned us behind the far end of the Cornucopia. Emma was prone across the open hall laying down cover fire whenever one of us tried to move while Kisarna and Mase discussed the best way to get around and at us.
"What do we do?" I asked. We were all looking to Hunter. He was the only one with any training. But there was a reason he wasn't in the pack. He had the training but no one was sure he had the nerve.
He hesitated as he second-guessed himself. "We need to take out Emma," he said.
"On it," Tillo said. She ran out from our perch and sprinted at Emma. When Emma raised her bow to fire Tillo waited an instant and then dove forward, hitting the floor and sliding forward.
"Wait!" I yelled as she left. Without thinking I ran after her. Tillo reached Emma and punched her in the face while she was still processing how utterly bizarre Tillo's attack had been. I reached them both as they started to roll on the floor and stomped Emma's face while Tillo slowed her escape.
When I noticed the lack of throwing stars in the back of my head I turned around. Reiner was trading blows with Kisarna, two throwing stars embedded in his arms from where he'd shielded his face. Hunter was firing another arrow into Mase's body. He turned to help Reiner but was too slow to stop Kisarna from tearing out his throat with another throwing star. As she fled he shot her in the back. I looked back down at Tillo and could only watch as she started to gasp and then hyperventilate at the poison we hadn't known Emma dipped her arrows in.
Everything after that was mundane in comparison. A mutt got Hunter after we separated. The same mutt got Willow, who'd been hiding all the way until the final two.
It was surreal to be the first male Victor from Ten. And not what people usually mean when they say surreal. Literally surreal. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Everywhere I went I was a celebrity. People stopped on the streets just to gawk at me. I had enough money to do anything I wanted. And I never had to be afraid of the Games again. That was the one that really stuck with me. I never again in my life had to be afraid of being Reaped. I'd survived the worst nightmare of every single person in my country.
No one told me victory would be so strange. The only one who understood was Cornflower, who for her part was overjoyed I won because it meant a little less attention on her, though she still got far more than she liked since she was the first Ten Victor of all. I knew "surreal" was the best word when my life was so strange that Cornflower was the person who understood me best. I wondered sometimes what it was that made me the first person she brought home. I was going to go down in history. My name would be in books far past when I was dead. That was a lot for a very plain and ordinary person to live up to. It would take a long time for that to feel normal.